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FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


TRUTH AND FICTION. 




BY 

CHAELES GAYAEKE, 

AXTTHOB OB' “ THB HISTORY OF LOUISIANA,” “PHILIP II. OF SPAIN,” “ THH 
SCHOOL FOR POLITICS,” ETC., ETC. 



NEW YORK: 

G. JV. Carleton & Co,y Publishers, 

LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO. 
M.DCCC.LXXII. 


C£vi-I.u "t 

a 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 
CHARLES GAYARR^J. 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. 






C&is Wflrk 

IS 

Respectfully Pedicated ■ 

TO 

THE UNKNOWN AND FUTURE FRIENDS 

WHOM 


IT MAT MAKE FOR ITSELF. 


ATJBERT DIJBAYET, 

A SEQUEL TO 


FERNANDO DE DEMOS. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I. 

PERNAITIX) DE LEMOS AT THE COLLEGE OF ORLEANS 11 

CHAPTER II. 

PROFESSORS AND PUPILS 19 

CHAPTER HI. 

THE RICH AND THE POOR STUDENT, FERNANDO DE LEMOS 

AND RODERIC TREVIGNE 30 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE BLEEDING NOSE AND THE CURSE OF THE GYPSY 39 

CHAPTER V. 

TREVIGNE, THE POOR LAD EDUCATED AT THE COST OP THE 
STATE, TURNS OUT TO BE A GRANDEE OF SPAIN. FER- 
NANDO DE LEMOS TRAVELS IN EUROPE 49 

CHAPTER VI. 

LOUIS PHILIPPE AND THE HANGMAN OP PARIS, A STRANGE 

PROPHECY SUBSEQUENTLY VERIFIED 60 

CHAPTER VII. 

CONTINUATION OF FERNANDO’S TRAVELS IN EUROPE 70 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE MARQUIS AND HIS BROTHERS. A STRIKING EFFECT OF ' 
THE VOLUNTARY OBSERVANCE OP THE RIGHT OP PRIMO- 
GENTIURE 83 

CHAPTER IX. 

FERNANDO’S ADVENTURES IN THE PYRENEES 94 

i 

CHAPTER X. 

FERNANDO, THE BANDIT AND HIS DAUGHTER. WHY THE OLD 

PRIEST OP THE MOUNTAIN REFUSED TO BECOME A BISHOP. 106 


8 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XI. 

FERNANDO JOINS AT RONCAL, IN NAVARRE, HIS SCHOOLMATE, 

TREVIGNE, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE CARLIST ARMY. . 116 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE BATTLE OF RONCAL BETWEEN THE CARLISTS AND CHRIST- 

INOS, DEATH OF TREVIGNE 128 

CHAPTER XIII. 

FERNANDO RETURNS TO LOUISIANA, AND BECOMES ACQUAINT- 
ED WITH TINTIN CALANDRO, THE CRAZY SEXTON OF THE 
ST. LOUIS CEMETERY, BUT IN WHOSE UNSETTLED BRAIN 
THERE YET LURKS MUCH WISDOM 136 

CHAPTER XIV. 

IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT THERE IS NO BETTER SCHOOL 
FOR PRACTICAL AND MORAL INSTRUCTION THAN A GRAVE- 
YARD 149 

CHAPTER XV. 

IN WHICH FERNi^NDO AND TINTIN CALANDRO RELATE TO 
EACH OTHER MANY INTERESTING THINGS IN THE ST. 

LOUIS CEMETERY 162 

CHAPTER XVI. 

O’NEIL THE ATHEIST 175 

CHAPTER XVII. 

TINTIN CALANDRO, THE GRAVE-DIGGER, REFUTES THE ARGU- 
MENTS OF O’NEIL, THE SCHOLAR AND THE ATHEIST 191 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

VALDECK, THE RICH GERMAN MERCHANT, AND ANAYA, THE 

PORTUGUESE JEW 208 

CHAPTER XIX. 

SOMETHING ON THE JEWS. — THE WHITE AND BLACK PEAS OF 

PAPIJiLON, THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE 222 


CONTENTS, 


9 


CHAPTER XX. 

A JURY TRIAL. — THE FORCE AND VITALITY OP PREJUDICES. 233 

CHAPTER XXL 

THE OLD CHIEF JUSTICE AND HIS BLACK SERVANT TOM 242 

CHAPTER XXII. 

BETTER BE A PIONEER THAN A LAWYER.— TINTIN CALANDRO’S 

HALLUCINATIONS 256 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

MASTERS AND SLAVES. — TINTIN (JaLANDRO’S VATICINATIONS 

ON THE SUBJECT 268 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE STATESMAN. — BETTER BE A DOG THAN A POLITICIAN. . . . 285 

CHAPTER XXV. 

OLD ZABET THE BLACK WOMAN, AND HER PHILOSOPHY. . . . 293 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

CHRISTMAS EVE. — THE MUSICIAN AND THEOLOGIAN 304 

CHAPTER XXVII 

THE ELOQUENT MADMAN 320 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

DOMINIQUE YOU, THE PIRATE 389 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE PATE OF THE DAUGHTER OP AARON BURR REVEALED. 

GENERAL JACKSON AND THE CORSAIRS OF BARATARIA 354 

CHAPTER XXX. 

THE CARNIVAL OP VENICE IN THE ST. LOUIS CEMETERY. — THE 
ACTRESS GRISELDA AND THE SPANISH DUKE. — BACKBONE 
AND SADFISH, OR GOOD AND BAD LUCK. .' 364 


10 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

CONTINUATION OF THE STORY OF BACKBONE AND SADFISH, 

OR GOOD AND BAD LUCK STS 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

END OF THE STORY OF BACKBONE AND SADFISH. — DEATH OF 

TINTIN CALANDRO 38o 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

WHAT WAS THE VEILED PORTRAIT BEQUEATHED BY TINTIN 
CALANDRO TO FERNANDO. — THE PRINCESS OF LAMBALLE, 

AND JOSEPH LAKANAL, THE REGICIDE AND THE LAST PRIN- 
CIPAL OF THE COLLEGE OF ORLEANS 395 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

FERNANDO DE LEMOS RETURNS TO NEW ORLEANS, AFTER THE 

WAR OF SECESSION. — THE PORTICO OF ST. CHARLES HOTEL . . 404 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE DABNEY FAMILY, — THE APPARITION 414 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

THE TWO WIDOWS. — JANE DABNEY AND HER LOVER, LUDOVICO 

BARBARINI 425 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

GABRIEL THE FRIEND OF JANE DABNEY, CALLS ON COLONEL 
LUDOVICO BARBARINI, HER DESTROYER. — A FASHIONABLE 

BALL 436 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

THE OLD SPANIARD ALVAREZ. — A CHAPTER ON IMPULSES 446 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

A DUEL. — COLONEL LUDOVICO BARBARINI DIES LIKE A PRINCE. 456 

CHAPTER XL. 

CONCLUSION OF THE STORY OF THE DABNEY FAMILY 466 

CHAPTER XLI. 

WHAT HAPPENED TO FERNANDO DE LEMOS IN NEW ORLEANS 

AFTER THE END OF THE SECESSION WAR 479 


FERNANDO DE DEMOS. 


CHAPTER I. 

FERNANDO DE LEMOS AT THE OLD COLLEGE OF ORLEANS. 

The church of St. Augustin, at the corner of Hos- 
pital and St. Claude streets, now stands on a portion 
of a large tract of land once appropriated to the Col- 
lege ^of Orleans, the first educational institution of 
Louisiana which was incorporated by her Legislature ; 
it fiourished for a short time, with a promise of dura- 
tion ; but it soon disappeared, leaving few traces of its 
existence save a fragment or two of its long dormito- 
ries, which have been converted into private dwellings, 
and save also a few sexagenarian gentlemen, who, by 
their classical attainments and refined manners, show 
that the defunct institution was not without its merits, 
and had, in some instances at least, accomplished the 
purpose for which it had been erected. I, Fernando de 
Lemos, was about sdVen years old when my name was 
registered in the records of this Alma Mater^ which 
was then under the direction of Jules Davezac, a highly 
polished gentleman of the old school and a native of 
St. Domingo. It is difficult to determine which pre- 
dominated in him — the gentleman, or the scholar. I 
incline to believe that there was in his organization a 
happy combination of both characters, in equally bal 

( 11 ) 


12 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


anoed proportions. 1 even now, after the lapse of so 
many years, delight in the remembrance (f his affec- 
tionate accents, and of the expression of genial benev- 
olence which overspread his face whenever he addressed 
any one of his youthful subordinates. We used to call 
him Titus, in memory of the Koman emperor of that 
name ; and it was not inappropnate after all ; for if 
Titus was the delight of mankind, Davezac was the 
delight of his juvenile subjects. For some cause or 
other, which we never knew — whether he abdicated, 
or was decapitated — certain it is that his reign was not 
long, and he was succeeded by another native of St. 
Domingo, named Rochefort. Many of the French, 
when driven from that Island by the negroes, had fled 
to the neighboring one of Cuba, from which they had 
again been expelled when Napoleon invaded Spain. 
About four thousand of that unfortunate population 
had at last taken refuge in New Orleans, where they 
met with much sympathy and the most liberal support. 
Most of them were energetic and industrious ; some 
were highly educated ; and the hospitable inhabitants 
of the city had not been backward in offering them 
opportunities to better their fortunes. I am not sure 
that there was not in the College Board of Regents a 
majority composed of the exiles of St. Domingo ; which 
shows the extraordinary facility with which they had 
affiliated with the natives of Louisiana, and the marked 
influence which they had acquired in a short time. 

It was to that influence, as well as to his own merit, 
that Rochefort was indebted for his appointment. Be- 
sides being the principal — the head of the collegiate 
establishment — he had charge of the highest Latin 
class, and was professor of literature. He was himself 
no despicable poet, and had made very elegant transla- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


13 


tions of the best odes of Horace, which he delighted 
to read to his pupils. Whenever not engaged in teach- 
ing, he used to walk rapidly in a long gallery, into 
which his private apartments opened, sometimes thump- 
ing the floor violently with his club-foot, as if with a 
stick, drinking cup after cup of cofiee, and occasionally 
giving vent to a shrill, short, abrupt whistle. It was 
probably his way of crowing, when he had found at 
last some felicitous expression of which he had been 
long in search. Whether it was due to the profuse 
quantity of Mocha which he imbibed, or whether he 
really possessed the divine afflatus,” it seemed to us 
that he had what we considered ought to be the in- 
spired look of the favorite of Apollo and of the Muses. 
His brow expanded finely, and he was bald on the top 
of his head, from which, what remained of his hair 
fell in silky curls down his neck. There was always a 
sort of flush over his face, as if produced by some in- 
ward excitement, and his eyes were wonderfully lus- 
trous. Beyond the Latin classics, the histories of 
Home, Greece and France, he hardly knew anything. 
The darkness which surrounded the little bright spot 
where he dwelt, was welcome to him ; it made more 
brilliant, by circumsciibing it, the only light for which 
he cared. He was a monomaniac in his aversion to 
mathematics, and could not bear any allusion to that 
science. If such a subject was introduced, he became 
nervous and fretful. It was like presenting water to a 
mad dog. A wag of our class pretended that he had 
surprised, one day, our venerated tutor casting up two 
and two on a sheet of paper, and coming slowly to the 
conclusion, after repeated efforts, that it made fcur. 

Kochefort occupied for his residence the second story 
of a very large building, in the lower part of which 


14 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


were some of the classes. In that second story there 
were several rooms, which he gave to such of his pupils 
as had pre-eminently distinguished themselves in those 
high classes of which he had the special charge. The 
occupancy of these rooms withdrew their fortunate 
tenants from subjection to any other authority than 
that of Kochefort From that moment they were priv- 
ileged beings ; they acted as they pleased, without con- 
trol from the ordinary proctors, and were amenable 
only to him for their acts. He frequently invited them 
in turn to his table, and as frequently took them to the 
theatre, (at their own expense, however,) whenever the 
drama to be acted was deemed by him of a suitable 
character. He was a bachelor, and they were his 
adopted family by reciprocal consent. The other pu- 
pils called these envied few the principal’s body guard. 
In fact, it was an aristocracy which, although estab- 
lished as the reward of intellect and labor, was unpop- 
ular among the pupils, and disliked even by the pro- 
fessors and proctors. It was a sort of house of peers, 
which every outsider seemed to think it his duty to 
rail against and to pull down, if possible ; but it stood 
firm against all assaults. It was particularly galling 
to the inferior teachers, to the proctors, and the police- 
men of the institution, to witness the secret freaks of 
these magnates, without daring to interfere or denounce 
them. It was always a grand day to us (for why should 
I not admit that I was one of those magnates), when 
we were summoned to accompany our chief to the 
theatre of Orleans street, the only one then existing. 
The number of the selected was usually limited to six. 
On such occasions Kochefort put himself at the head 
of the squad, and marched with an air of proud satis- 
faction through the streets of Hew Orleans. Conscious 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


15 


of being the observed of all observers, he seemed to 
Bay plainly to the idlers who gazed at us : Look on, 
my friends, look on ; for you see with me spes pa- 
After the theatrical entertainment was over, 
when on our way back to our classical home, he would 
ask us our opinion as to the merits of the play, and of 
the actors, and either approve or correct our judgments. 
It was evidently a source of great annoyance to him, 
if not of grief, that his brother was one of those come- 
dians. Of course, he npver alluded in his criticisms to 
the manner in which that brother had performed his 
part on the stage, and we as sedulously avoided to ven- 
ture on that tacitly forbidden ground — the more so, 
because Rochefort, the actor, who was a very respecta- 
ble individual in his every-day character, was not 
always equally worthy of praise in those which he pro- 
fessionally assumed. 

At our time of life, most of the actors and actresses 
whose performances we had witnessed, loomed up like 
wonderful personages whom we could not too much ad- 
mire ; and we used to experience quite a shock when 
our chief, revising our judgments one after the other, 
poured his bucket of cold water on our enthusiasm, and, 
almost to our regret, showed the many imperfections 
which we had taken for real beauties. We, not un- 
naturally, concluded that he was a most severe, if not 
unjust, critic. Every dollar which he could save from 
the requirement of his personal wants, and from the 
contributions which he generously granted to the sup- 
port of his brother’s family, he invested in books. He, 
therefore, had accumulated a large library, to which we, 
the privileged few, had free access. This liberality was 
more than once the cause of my being reprimanded and 
* The hope of the country. 


16 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


punished. Our chief had issued an ukase that, at ten 
o’clock at night, all lights were to be extinguished in our 
rooms, and that we were to betake ourselves to our bed 
without unnecessary delay. I must confess that, gener- 
ally, I was obstinately bent on sitting up late, notwith- 
standing the danger of disobedience, and I frequently 
disregarded the hour of the curfew, particularly when 
I had picked up in the adjacent library, a book which 
enticed me to rebellion against the prescribed rule. 
Hence, on more than one occasion, I was startled by 
the voice of our worthy principal, who had to my dis- 
may got out of bed and who shouted to me : 

Fernando, bring to me to-morrow before sunset, ten 
pages of Tacitus translated into the very best French, 
mind you mentioning the chapter and book. 

I always suspected, however, that he was very mag- 
nanimous to me, and that he voluntarily abstained from 
noticing many of my midnight transgressions; for 
sometimes, in the morning, he would say to me with a 
tone of assumed severity : 

“ I believe, sir, that you sat up late last night — is it or 
is it not true ?” 

I knew how to parry the blow when I thought that I 
had been transgressing. 

It may be so, sir,” I said ; “ I beg pardon for what 
I have done. My only excuse is, that I had not noticed 
the flight of time ; for I was rather in a vein of inspira- 
tion, and indulged in writing some verses.” 

‘‘ Yerses ! child, verses ! what was it about? Show 
them to me,” he would say, with eager curiosity, rub- 
bing his hands, and with an irrepressible chuckle of sat- 
isfaction. 

Allow me, sir, if you please, to polish them a h'ttle 
before submitting them to your judgment.” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


17 


^^Yery well; tliat is right; polish, polish away. I 
give you until to-morrow.” 

Thus, I more than once found myself set down for a 
poetical effusion, within twenty-four hours’ notice, no- 
lens miens. But we of the upper-tendom never felt 
more grand than when old Tyrtaeus, (we had thus 
nicknamed him after the club-footed Greek poet who, 
chanting his hymns at the head of the Spartans, led 
them to victory,) invited us to dine at his table, with 
the announcement that, the convivial entertainment be- 
ing over, he would read to us one of his original pro- 
ductions. Good wine and good cheer prepared us for 
the august ceremony, and, when he had done reading, 
he could easily discern that we were sincerely and hon- 
estly in ecstasies. How could it be otherwise % The 
stomach is more grateful than the heart, and its grati- 
tude rose up in savory vapors to the brain, which it pre- 
pared for approbation of the intellectual dish that made 
its appearance, after a more substantial one had been 
duly relished by the flesh. Besides, were we not greatly 
complimented by being taken as judges? We felt as 
consequential as an areopagus of Greek critics would 
have been, had Apollo deigned to descend from high 
Olympus to submit to the decision of their tribunal. 
By Jupiter ! I cannot but smile even now, on recollect- 
ing the scene which we then exhibited. Whosoever 
you are who may peruse these lines, if you have seen 
the well-known engraving representing Walter Scott 
reading one of his poems to an assembly of his literary 
friends, you have the proper model before you to group 
us as artistically ; and you may be able to draw a pic- 
ture equally pleasing to you and to ourselves. But, to 
be strictly truthful in your representation, do not forget 
to suffuse our cheeks with a glow of intense sielf-impor- 


18 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


tance. On these occasions, old Tjrtaeiis usually dismiss- 
ed us with a paternal admonition in the blandest style, 
saying: ‘‘^N’ow, boys, return to your studies with in- 
creased emulation ; behave well ; and above all, culti- 
vate the muses, if you wish for a repetition of this en- 
tertainment.” 

Poor Kochefort ! years afterwards I visited him on 
his death 'bed ; infirmities having compelled him to re- 
sign as principal of the college. He had gradually be- 
come pinched in his circumstances, and, in consequence 
of it, he had been under the dire necessity, from time 
to time, to sell his books. It was to him like parting 
with pieces of his own fiesh. Still, he had a goodly 
number of them remaining, and his last looks had the 
consolation to rest on them. When the visit I speak of 
was paid to him, senatorial honors had just been con- 
ferred on me. He had heard of it ; and, when I made 
my appearance, he exclaimed, “ Moriturm te sahitat, 
0 jpater conscri^tus ! * Let me kiss, child, those capi- 
tolian lips before I am wafted across the Styx by old 
Charon. Os magna lomturus^ f I predict. Ha, ha ! 
Macte animo, jpuer, ^ You are my work, boy ; you are 
my work — never forget it !” 

Alas! old Tyrtseus has long since gone to his last 
place of rest ; and, true to his wishes I have never for- 
gotten him. Let these lines be the proof of my fond 
and grateful remembrance. 

* He who is soon to die, salutes thee, O conscript father ! 

t A mouth which is destined to speak great Wangs. 

X Strive on with increasing courage, hoy ! 


CHAPTER n. 


PROFESSORS AND PUPILS. 

We had another remarkable personage among our 
teachers. It was Teinturier, the professor of mathema- 
tics, a bachelor too like Rochefort. He was tall and 
wiry, as thin as a lath, and as sallow as the oldest piece 
of parchment extant. His small, round, pumpkin-like 
head, was covered with dense crispy hair which began 
to be silvered with age. His food consisted of only two 
things — ^bread and milk — bread well baked — which he 
broke carefully, systematically and almost mathemati- 
cally into fragments of equal size, and which he cast 
into a large bowl of boiling milk. Once in the course 
of the day, and once in the course of the night, he 
took a teaspoonful of coffee. Such being his diet, his 
thinness is not to be wondered at. He never walked 
but trotted, with his eyes always closed. God only 
knows how he found his way ; it must have been by 
instinct. His absence of mind was such, that he not 
unfrequently went north, when he should have gone 
south. More than once the urchins of the city, to 
every one of whom his eccentric figure was well- 
known, had hailed him with : “ Ho ! ho ! old Teintu- 
rier, whither are you trotting ? ” 

You impudent imps of darkness,” he would reply, 
“ you know very well I am going to the college. I am 
afraid I am a little too late.” 

“ How came you then, old crazy owl,” would young 

(19 ) 


20 


FERNANDO DE DEMOS. 


America shout with frolicsome boldness, “-to turn jour 
back on it, like a naughty boy, playing truant and run- 
ning away from school.” 

Thus addressed, the dreamer, stopping short, uttered 
all sorts of exclamations of surprise, and looking like a 
bewildered somnambulist on his waking up in a strange 
place, would start in the right direction with quickened 
pace. 

Teinturier was passionately fond of horticulture, 
and had in one of the subm^bs of the city a very large 
garden and orchard famous for their vegetables, their- 
Aowers and fruits. Often he was seen working the 
whole night by moonlight. He allowed himself but 
very little sleep. This was a systematic rule with hun, 
although nature would enforce her claims despite his 
will ; so that, even when walking, or rather trotting, he 
was sometimes half asleep ; and at the dinner table, or 
in a friend’s parlor, or in the professor’s chair, it 
happened that he occasionally departed, without being 
conscious of it, for the land of dreams. He snapped his 
fingers at the sun, and maintained that it was an absurd 
prejudice to be afraid of its heat. Hence, in the hottest 
months of the year he would strip himself stark naked, 
and work lustily in his garden in this primitive costume 
of Adam, thereby demonstrating, as he said, his pro- 
position, that the white man could, in July and August, 
brave the canicular rays with impunity. In that con- 
dition, and when thus occupied, he looked very much 
like a half-boiled lobster trying to escape from the cook 
and bury itself in the ground. Besides being an excel- 
lent gardener and making handsome profits as such, 
and besides being a professor of mathematics with a 
good salary, Teinturier had another string to his bow — 
which was, to tune pianos, and great was the call on 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS, 


21 


him for that purpose. He was also exceedingly fond 
of natural history, so much so, that, whenever we 
were not prepared for our lessons and had been neglect- 
ful in our prescribed studies, we used, on his enter- 
ing the class, to present to him in the most artless 
manner we could assume, a string of insects about 
which he would descant most learnedly — we fanning the 
discourse with our questions, until the hour which was 
allotted to our class had glided away. There was some- 
thing ludicrous in the amazement which his face showed 
on such occasions, when we notified him that the time 
was out and that we had to attend another class ; but 
recovering himself, he would say good humoredly : 

Well, well, how time fiies ! It is really prodigious. 
Who could have believed it ? Still, my young friends, 
we have not been uselessly employed. Have we? 
Hatural history is very curious and attractive. It must, 
however, be used only as an amusement — an innocent 
and instructive recreation. There is but one thing 
worthy of being denominated a science. That is, ma- 
thematics. It is the Alpha and Omega of all knowl- 
edge — the great I am — the pervading spirit of the uni- 
verse. Good-bye, my lads ; go again and carefully over 
the lessons which you were to recite to-day, and we will 
have a grand time of it to-morrow. He who may 
deserve to be put at the head of the class, shall have a 
prize — mind you — a fuU basket of fruit, and even 
popish indulgences for some' future peccadilloes.” After 
having thus delivered himself, he smiled benignantly, 
closed his eyes and trotted away. 

There was with the class a favorite joke, in which 
we sometimes indulged — which was — when he was 
preparing to depart for the day, to present him with 
toads, frogs, bugs, butterfiies, and all sorts of insects 


22 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


which we had caught. He invariably pinned thenii to 
his hat and his sleeves, and went home, moving like a 
somnambulist, apparently unaware of being followed 
by a host of little blackguards who made themselves 
merry at his expense, and whose shouts and jeers testi- 
fied their glee. We sometimes served another trick on 
our worthy professor. His chair was like those appro- 
priated to the district judges in Hew Orleans, and look- 
ing somewhat like church pulpits. On his ascending 
into it, he used, before commencing his course of instruc- 
tion, to rest awhile with his elbows on his desk and with 
his chin in the palm of his hand, whilst gathering his 
thoughts. On such occasions, particularly during the 
dog days, we sometimes observed that, absorbed in re- 
fiecting on what he had to say, he ended in nodding 
very suggestively. As soon as such a symptom was dis- 
covered, the class became so silent that a pin might 
have been heard to fall. All eyes were riveted on the 
drooping head of the professor, and when it was evident 
that Morpheus had triumphed over the god of angles 
and triangles, we noiselessly crept from our seats, closed 
doors and windows to produce the darkness favorable to 
slumber, and deserting the room, left the man of equa- 
tions to his undisturbed repose, which sometimes was 
of long duration. On his waking, he would mildly 
remonstrate against our conduct. But, on our assur- 
ing him that we had been guided only by respectful 
considerations, that we thought he looked fatigued and 
unwell, and that we had been afraid of his over exert- 
ing himself on our behalf, he would seem to be much 
relieved, and would say with much benignity : 

‘‘Well, my children, I thank you heartily. It was 
very kind on your part to show such regards to me, al- 
though it was very wrong on mine to fall asleep ; for 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


23 


it was my duty to be awake, and duty must always be 
performed. But what were you doing whilst I slept 

“ Oh I we were all on the piazza, knee deep in Eu- 
clid, amusing ourselves with algebra and trigonometry, 
settling equations and solving problems.” 

“ Bless you, boys ; you console me for my accidental 
dereliction of duty. Then no time has been lost, and 
my conscience is at ease. You will be an honor to the 
State and to myself.” 

There was one thing which this man, who had in 
him so much of the milk of human kindness, utterly 
abhorred. It was poetry. If, to tease him, we spouted 
some passage from the French classics, he flew into a 
fit of indignation : 

“ What, boys ! what ! what do I hear ? What non- 
sense is this ? In my presence, too ! This is positively 
to be lacking in respect to me. Poetry ! pish ! pshaw ! 
What is there in that thing called poetry ? What does 
it prove ? What is it good for ? Does it demonstrate 
any truth ? Did any two persons ever agree as to its 
merits ? What constitutes its essence ? What is poetry, 
and what is not ? As well might one attempt to ana- 
lyze the substance of a shadow. Will poetry build a 
bridge, or a house, or a fortification, or an engine? 
Will it steer a ship, or calculate the march of the heav- 
enly bodies ? Mathematics, boys, mathematics ! It 
sums up everything. What would the world be with- 
out mathematics ? The Creator himself is nothing but 
the most sublime of all mathematicians. A poet 1 
Fie ! ” and he would grin like a monkey sick at the 
stomach and ready to faint. That any one should have 
been so foolish as to write a comedy, or a tragedy, was 
s puzzle to him. 

But, Mr. Kochefort,” we would say to him, main- 


24 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


tains tliat poetry does more to ennoble mankind Iban 
anything else.” 

Mr. Eochefort ! ha ! ha ! a mere coiner of rhymes ! 
a manufacturer of jingling sentences. A fine authority, 
truly! a man who could not go through one of the 
simplest operations of the multiplication table ! and 
you quote him, and to my face, too 1 You who, under 
my tuition, are every day discovering and appropriat- 
ing some of the celestial beauties and secrets of mathe- 
matics ! A truce to this nonsense. Allow, my boys, no 
such follies to divert your attention from serious studies, 
or you will give me much pain.” Then he would 
stride away, tossing his head in disgust, and emitting 
between his teeth a sort of sibilant sound, which, be- 
ginning like a half-s oppressed hiss, ended in a dryj con- 
temptuous, hysterical laugh. 

It must be confessed that Eochefort richly repaid 
the compliment by his aversion to mathematics. It was 
as intense as Teinturier’s hatred of poetry. Sometimes, 
as one of our best practical jokes, one of us who be- 
longed to Eochefort’s privileged class of literary gran- 
dees, on seeing him coming, would put himself in his 
way, and bending over his slate, would seem to be en- 
gaged in some absorbing occupation. 

“Ah! ah! child,” would old Tyrtseus cheerily ex- 
claim as he approached, “ you are trying your hand at 
some stanzas, are you ? An ode, perhaps % Is it French, 
or Latin ? Let me see, let me see ! ” And he would 
eagerly bend over the slate. Then followed the angry 
expostulations : 

“ What, sir ! What hieroglyphics are these % Is it so 
that you waste your precious time ? ” 

“ Sir, I am studying my lesson of mathematics. I 
am solving one of the problems of Euclid.” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


25 


“ Euclid ! Euclid ! Who is he ? Oh ! . . . I see . . . 
some of Teinturier’s nonsense. Good God ! that some 
of my best pupils should be exposed to be spoiled by 
that man, their imagination chilled, and their poetic 
hre extinguished just as it began to expand !” 

And thumping his fiercest thump with his club foot, 
he would limp away with extraordinary fieetness, as if 
pursued by the ghosts of Archimedes and ^^'ewton. 
When at a safe distance from the mischievous joker, 
lie would turn round, ca^t a reproachful glance at the 
student and his slate, and then, emitting his shrillest 
whistle — sharp, angry and menacing — would resume his 
fiight.' 

Another oddity was our professor of drawing. His 
name was Selles, and, like Eochefort, he was frc>ra the 
island of St. Domingo. Selles was a superb gentleman. 
His body had been cast in a large mould, and was fine- 
ly proportioned. His countenance was imposing, and 
his large blue eyes beamed with a majestic expression. 
From the consciousness of his possessing these advan- 
tages, with a sonorous voice, and other physical as well 
as mental qualifications, the excellence of which was 
no doubt greatly exaggerated in his own estimation, he 
had come to the conclusion that he would have been 
the most illustrious actor in the world, if his gentle 
birth had permitted him to go on the stage. As it was, 
and in his. present situation as a teacher, he consoled 
himself with occasionally assuming tragic attitudes, and 
declaiming passages from Corneille and Eacine, for the 
])rofit and delight of his pupils. We took care to en- 
courage him in these exhibitions ; for we preferred 
forming an idle audience to drawing eyes, iioses, mouths 
and ears. Therefore, one of us would sometimes turn 
round from his desk and humbly beg Selles, as he 


26 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


passed along our benclies, muttering liis long Alex- 
andrines, to be so kind as to sliow us how Talma, the 
great French actor in Paris, spoke a particular passage. 
He generally consented with alacrity to gratify such a 
desire, always admonishing us, however, that the inter- 
ruption to our labors would have to be a short one, and 
that we must promise him to return to our pencils with 
renewed gusto. The promise was readily made, of 
course, and the exhibition began much to our amuse- 
ment, but it occasionally ended tragically for one of us, 
Avho happened to be so unfortunate as to be tickled 
into an outright burst of laughter by his contortions. 

“ Oh ! you laugh, little rascal,” would the trage- 
dian exclaim, ‘^when you should weep, or be terror- 
stricken ! I will teach you better manners, and better 
taste.” And he would shower cuffs on the luckless sin- 
ner, -who then shed tears as he ought to have done be- 
fore, or pretended to do. After this, our professor 
would be unapproachable for several days, permitting 
not the slightest attempt at conversation with him, and 
contenting himself with uttering in a low grumbling 
tone some verses, as he walked royally erect, but with 
ill-concealed vexation, between the rows of the artists 
in embryo whom he had in charge, and who looked 
sadly dejected ; for they knew wdiat was coming. On 
such occasions he would always complain, as he bent 
over our "shoulders, that our drawings were greasy, and 
he would shout : 

“ Why do you not wash your hands, little pigs ? Mind 
you, I am going through a regular course of inspection. 
Show your drawings, all of you.” 

Obedient to the command we held up our sheets of 
paper ; and as he stepped from one pupil to the other, 
he would yell out : “ Butter, sir, butter ! nothing bnt 


FERNANDO DE LEMOb. 27 

butter !” and, as he strode along, the words would ring 
fiercer and fiercer and with more tragic intonations: 

Butter, sir, butter, butter all over ! I will report 
you, little wretches, I will ; and you shall have nothing 
but dry bread at dinner.” 

It was literally terrific ; w^e actually sobbed, and felt 
as if the earth were giving way under our feet, w^hilst 
the overwhelming denunciations poured thick and fast 
upon our devoted heads. I doubt whether Talma, 
Garrick, Booth, Keane, or Macready, ever produced 
such an efiect on their audiences. 

Another individual, a cousin of Teinturier, who had 
no other name that we knew of than that of George, 
was another eccentricity. George was one of our proc- 
tors, and bad charge of the police of one of the classes 
which occupied rooms in the first story under the apart- 
ments of Kochefort, the principal. George was an old 
man with a socratic face, and with powdered hair gath- 
ered behind into a well trimmed and neatly tied cue 
which hung down over his coat. Like Teinturier, he 
had a passion for horticulture, and possessed a small 
garden of about forty feet square in the immediate vi 
cinity of the college. There he spent all the time which 
he could spare. The poor fellow must certainly have 
felt very happy, when retreating from the torments in- 
flicted upon him by the unruly boys whom he had to 
manage, and whom he did not manage at all, for he was 
the w^eakest of mankind. He could not have controlled 
a class of the most timid girls, and much less a quick- 
silver assemblage of Southern boys. Lambs and kids 
might have taken the liberty to gambol on the should- 
ers of old Socrates, as we called him, without his being 
able to summon sufficient resolution to interrupt their 
frolics. It was one of the freaks of the class, when the 


28 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


spirit of miscliief got into them, to bombard old Socrates 
with paper bullets, aiming particularly at his cue, whilst 
he was promenading gravely between the rows of desks, 
and seeing that every pupil was at work. Whenever 
he was hit, he turned round sharply, and looking at the 
supposed delinquent, he would say in a deprecating 
tone : 

‘‘You did- it, sir. I beg you to put an end to this 
pleasantry.” 

This charge was always met with an indignant de- 
nial by the accused, who affected to feel much aggrieved, 
even when he was really guilty of the offence. ‘ If the 
assault was continued too long, without his being able 
to discover those who waged against him this unmer- 
ciful guerrilla warfare, old Socrates would stop short in 
his methodical walk, and, casting a sweeping look over 
the whole class, would say : 

“ Gentlemen, I give you notice that I am going to 
halloo — halloo — halloo — if you don’t cease these fool- 
eries.” 

At this very moment, perhaps a paper bullet would 
alight on his short upturned nose, or some other tender 
part of his face, to which attack he replied wdth a shriek, 
and with these words which he shouted with all the 
strength of his lungs : 

“ Mr. Eochefort, help ! Help, help, Mr. Eochefort,” 
dwelling on each syllable so as to make it a yard long. 
“ Mr. Eochefort, I am in danger of being murdered. 
Here is a rebellion on foot, you are wanted to quell it.” 

This appeal to Jove was answered from above with 
two or three violent thumps of the club foot, and an 
Olympian whistle, which instantly “ re-established or- 
der in Warsaw,” whilst we, the magnates, who dwelt in 
the upper region, heard Jove mutter contemptuously 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 29 

between bis teeth : Imbecile ! imbecile ! What an 
imbecile !’’ 

I do not believe that there ever was so restricted a 
spot on earth, where so many oddities were assembled, 
as within the learned precincts of this college. Each 
would deserve a particular description, without omit- 
ting, as too humble, the ubiquitous Bruno, our mulatto 
steward and common messenger, Yincent the door- 
keeper, with his wry neck and doleful countenance, and 
black Marengo, the umherciful and murderous cook. 
But I am afraid of tiring my readers, if I have the good 
luck to have any. All these reminiscences are connec- 
ted with one of a romantic nature, wliieh I shall pro- 
ceed to narrate. 


CHAPTER m. 


THE RICH AJO) POOR STUDENT, FERNANDO ^DE DEMOS AND 
RODERIC TRl^VIONE. 

There were in the college of Orleans only a few 
day scholars. They were youths who, generally on 
account of the poverty of their parents, could not afford to 
be full boarders. Most were admitted on half pay ; others 
did not pay at all, being sent by the Board of Regents, 
every member of which had the privilege to select a 
poor boy, who, on the recommendation of his patron, 
and on the assurance of his family being in destitute 
circumstances, was entitled to be educated gratis. 
Those who were thus selected by the Regents, were 
designated as charity students ” by those who had 
been more favored by fortune. This was ungenerous 
and mean ; but, alas, even children are not free from 
the blemish of upstart insolence. Among those “ charity 
boys ” who composed the plebs^ or populace of the in- 
stitution, and who were treated with lofty disdain by 
some of the sons of wealth, was a lad called Trevino. 
We had frenchified his name, and we pronounced it 
Trevigne. His father was a Spaniard, who lived in a 
hut on Bayou road, midway between Bayou St. John 
and the city. Who that Spaniard was nobody knew, 
Dr cared to know ; for he certainly was the most unso- 
ciable of human beings. Poor himself, he had mar- 
ried, shortly after his arrival in the country, a very 
( 30 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


31 


poor woman — so that it was what the French quaintly 
designate as the marriage of thirst and hunger.” He 
had never called on the Spanish consul, to whom prob- 
ably his existence remained unknown, although he 
looked like an educated gentleman, and one who had 
seen better days ; nor had he presented his respects to 
the cure of the parish. Father Antonio de Sedella. 
This individual, however, was an authority, and not 
to be neglected ; for whenever with his broad-brimmed 
hat, his eyes humbly beht to the ground, his long white 
beard, his coarse brownish gown tied round his waist 
with a rope from which hung a crucifix, and with ,hi3 
bare feet resting on sandals, he made his appearance in 
the streets, the most profane among pagans, catholics, 
or protestants, took off his hat. Almost every body, 
high or low, poor or rich, among the natives and 
among the foreigners who had resided in New Orleans 
any length of time, had always solicited an introduc- 
tion to the holy man, who, although in the receipt of 
a very large income as the cure of a wealthy parish, 
dwelt from choice, near the. cathedral, in a cabin which 
a slave would have thought an intolerable grievance to 
occupy, and who slept on the thinnest of mattresses 
spread over hard boards. As to the Spaniards, or those 
of Spanish origin, they kept up a sort of daily inter- 
course with the priest. The fact is, that no baptism 
was thought to be effectual, except performed by him, 
that the idea of wedding without his ministry could 
not be -entertained for an instant, and that one would 
have died in despair, if not consoled by the certainty of 
being escorted by him to the grave. 

Once on a Sunday morning. Father Antonio had 
not made his appearance as usual, to say mass at the 
cathedral, which, on that day, was always crowded to 


32 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


siifFocation. Another priest presented himself to offi- 
ciate at the altar. At that sight the emotion became 
indescribable. Father Antonio is sick ; perhaps he is 
dead.” These words ran in a low murmur among the 
excited assembly. There was a rush, and in a few 
minutes the church was empty — eveiy one, men, 
women and children, striving to be the first to arrive at 
Father Antonio’s house, if bouse it could be called. 
Informed probably of the coming of this mighty tide 
of human beings, by the roar which preceded it, the 
old man stood on the sill of his door, and waving his 
hand to command silence, said : 

I am in good health, my children, and I thank you 
for the anxiety and the motives which have brought 
you here. Eeturn to church to fulfill your duties to 
God; the explanation why I stay away is very sim- 
ple. I am for the present suspended by the bishop, 
and caniiot, until authorized by him, perform the func- 
tions of my ministry.” 

The immense crowd had become suddenly dumb and 
silent from amazement. They seemed to have been 
petrified, for they were motionless and breathless for 
awhile. But the storm soon burst out. 

Down with the bishop,” was the cry repeated by 
thousands. “ Let us drive him away, let us hang him. 
What ! Father Antonio suspended ! A saint prohib- 
ited from saying mass ! A good joke, to be sure ! Is 
the world coming to an end ? Let us carry him by 
force to the cathedral.” 

These were the sentiments vociferated by the multi- 
tude, and Father Antonio, notwithstanding his protest- 
ations, was seized by robust arms, placed in a large 
cushi(>ned chair, carried in triumph to the church, 
and deposited with tender care at the foot of the main 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


33 


altar amidst deafening sliouts. When released from 
the embraces of his admirers, the priest, with his back 
to the altar, and with his face towards the enraged 
mass of people that heaved and swelled before him 
like the waves of an angry sea, presented to them the 
crucifix, saying : 

In His name, peace to man on earth, and glory to 
God in heaven. I am sorry, my children, that I must 
reprimand yon for having used force to bring me here. 
Your love for me has blinded you, and I will do pen- 
ance for it on your behalf. But^I cannot officiate as 
you desire. I am suspended, as I have told you, by a 
legitimate authoilty, and I owe obedience to my supe- 
rior without questioning his motive, or the wisdom of 
his decision. I beg you therefore to disperse, and to 
‘return quietly to your respective homes.” 

For the first time in his life the holy man was dis- 
obeyed, and met with actual rebellion. He had hardly 
ceased to speak, when the fury of the people knew no 
bounds. ‘‘ To the Bishop’s palace,” was the cry. “ Let 
us give him a lesson, the confirmed hypocrite ! Let us 
make him dance a cotillion of our invention ! Let us 
hang him to the lamp-post ! Let us make him sing his 
mass set to a music that he never heard before !” Ut- 
tering these threats and all sorts of imprecations, the 
multitude was soon on its way to wreak its vengeance 
on the prelate, who, fortunately, had time to fly from 
its fury and leave the city. 

Thus it may be inferred from what I have related, 
that Father Antonio was no mean personage, and yet 
it was such a personage that Trevino, a Spaniard by 
birth to boot, had treated with conspicuous indiffer- 
ence. It was portentous. So thought every body, and 
every body was not well disposed towards this sullen 
2 * 


34 


FERyANDO DE LEM OS. 


stranger, who kept a cigar shop at the corner of St. 
Philip and Conde, now Chartres street, in a misei’able 
shantj of a building which stood up there, but which 
looked as if it did not intend to stand up long. Seated 
the whole day behind a few boxes of the fragrant weed 
which he sold, the poor Spaniard hardly made enough 
to keep soul and body together, for he w^as very unpop- 
ular. Those who entered his shop never could entice 
him into a chat. He was as dumb as an oyster, as 
solemn as a cathedral, and exhibited his cigars to his 
customers in the most freezing manner, neither recom- 
mending them, nor seeming to hear any remark made 
to their disparagement, or praise. It was with him : 
“ take them or not, as you please he did not care. 
It was also thought to be a remarkable peculiarity, for 
one who dealt in pure Havana, that he did not smoke 
himself. What did it mean % Had the man com- 
mitted a crime, and was he so sick at heart wdth re- 
morse, that he could not use tobacco, that universal 
comforter ? These were questions which were mooted 
at the time, but never answered. He was so frigid 
and so methodical, that he would have been set down 
as a mere lugubrious automaton rather than a man, if 
there had not been in his eye something which told of 
a life, stagnant in the present, but convulsed and 
stormy in the past, whereby there hung perhaps some 
dreadful tale of passion and of woe. Those eyes haunt 
me yet. What there was in them I never could ex- 
plain to myself, nor could I in the least describe, but 
when they rested on me, probably without distinguish- 
ing what object I was, so far away from the living re- 
alities around him were those thoughts in which he 
seemed absorbed, that I felt that strange and myste- 
rious creeping of the flesh which is sometimes pro- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


35 


duced bj a vague, uncalled for, and undefiriable ap- 
prehension of being in the invisible presence of some- 
thing unearthly. 

That unsociable Spaniard would, I believe, have been 
so thoroughly hated by the whole population, that his 
shop would have had no customers at all, if intense 
sorrow, and even despair, had not been unmistakably 
stamped on his brow. It was impossible to hate one 
who seemed to hate himself, and to be blasted by the 
wrath of heaven, if not by his own wickedness or folly. 
Yet, whatever were the agonies of that man, he sought 
the sympathies of none. He avoided the company of 
his fellow creatures, and withdrew into a solitude peo- 
pled only with his own dismal thoughts. He paid and 
received no visits. He was seen every morning, pre- 
cisely at the same hour, wending his way with a firm 
and steady step from his distant residence to his cigar 
shop, from which he returned only in the evening to 
his home. His family was composed of his wife, a son, 
and two daughters. As he passed gloomily through the 
long rows of houses, greeting nobody, and greeted by 
none, more than one old crony of a black woman, look- 
ing at him steadfastly, shook her woolly head with 
mysterious importance, as if that head was oppressed 
with some thought too big to come out. The wife of 
that raven-like individual was a very industrious woman, 
who always appeared cheerful, and who contributed to 
the support of her family by assiduously sewing for the 
ladies of the city. She was a universal favorite ; per- 
haps it was, in some degree, on account of the disfavor 
visited on her lord ; for such is the human heart. When 
she was interrogated as to her husband’s peculiarities, 
she would answer carelessly that he was a hypochondriac, 
and turn the conversation into another channel. Her 


36 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


two daughters, as they grew up, assisted her with all 
their might. They had been educated by the Ursuliue 
nuns, and did credit to those cliaritable sisters. Al- 
though very handsome, they were very modest, and 
even of a shrinking disposition. Their beautiful features, 
when enlivened with a smile, still retained a slight tinge 
of melancholy. Was it not natural, when they lived 
within the shadow of such a father ? For the very rays 
of the sun seemed to darken as they fell on him who, 
either from some motive of economy, or for some other 
reason, was always dressed in deep black, as if in mourn- 
ing, and looked like the incarnation of woe. 

Shortly after 1 had become an inmate of the college, 
the only son of the individual whom I have attempted 
to sketch, entered its precincts as a ‘‘ charity student ” 
by the appointment of one of the regents, as I have 
already stated ; that is to say — he was to be educated 
gratis. The boy was of about my own age, seven 
years old. As he was a charity student,” he was con- 
sidered of course as not belonging to what w^as denomi- 
nated the ^‘respectable set.” Eoderic Trevino, or 
rather Trevigne, as we called* him, was as beautiful as 
he was bashful, too beautiful and bashful for a boy. 
His hair was as black and glossy as a raven’s wing ; 
his forehead was high and as smooth as polished marble. 
All his features were as delicate as taste inspired by 
love could have imagined. His complexion was slightly 
olivaceous, and bespoke of his Spanish and Southern 
origin, but his skin was so soft that one would have taken 
it for a tissue of satin. The pure line of his eyebrows 
seemed to have been limned by an artist’s hand. His 
eyes were like two orbs of jet, half concealed under the 
long silky eyelashes which grew round them like an 
oriental curtain. There was in them a dreamy expres- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


37 


Bion, which it is not usual to observe in eiyes of that 
color, and which gave them an indescribable charm. 
We immediately took to each other, and we became 
friends at first sight. The modest, girlish look of the 
new comer attracted the attention of all the youthful 
inmates of the college, and, not long after he had be- 
come one of us, a boy called Yerdier, and who w-as the 
most odious little creature in the world on account of 
his intensely envious disposition, approached him on 
one occasion, and said in a sneering tone : ‘‘ How is 
Miss Trevigne to-day?” A blow from the timid and 
girlish looking boy on the big ugly nose of Yerdier was 
the unexpected answer, and Trevigne fought so bravely, 
that henceforth nobody was tempted to call him a girl. 
He Avas studious, but never distinguished himself pre- 
eminently. As we grew up, however, we kept in the 
same classes, — although I was much ahead of him in 
every one of them. He seemed to be proud of my 
superiority and to love me the more for it. 

Yerdier was also one of our class-mates, and the 
antipathy between him and Trevigne increased as they 
grew older. Trevigne never joined us in any of our 
sports, but, whilst Ave Avere thus engaged, kept out of 
our Avay, apparently occupied in studying one of his 
lessons, or stretched on the grass, gazing at the vault 
of heaven, or gravely walking with me when he could 
win me from our companions, and retain me at his side 
by afiectionately throAving his arm over my shoulders. 
Most of the boys ceased to notice one Avho showed such 
marked indifierence to them, and who, after all, Avas 
but a “ charity student — one who came in the morn- 
ing, rather shabbily dressed, with a mere crust of bread 
and a piece of cheese in his satchel for his breakfast, 
who had to return home at twelve o’clock for Avhat was 


38 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


supposed to be but a meagre dinner, and who, in the 
evening, ceased to be one of them, as he was compelled 
bj his poverty to sleep beyond the precincts of the 
college. He was not one of their set — he conld not be 
— why then should they care for him ? He was a 
“ charity student ” — a mere nobody. Even among 
children, although not in the same degree as among, 
men, to be poor is to be possessed of something repel- 
lant and refrigerating, wliich keeps off the fellowship 
of those who are, or who fancy that they are — ricli — so 
that I had Trevigneall to myself. Yerdier alone would 
occasionally force himself on us, with the evident inten- 
tion of giving pain to Trevigne, but without going so far 
as to give him the right to resent it, and therefore without 
exposing himself to punishment. He would even 
assume sometimes the garb of sympathy, the better to 
wound the somewhat morbid sensibilities of my gentle 
friend. Oh ! how cordially I hated him for it ! 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE BLEEDINH NOSE, AND THE CURSE OF THE GYPSY. 

Yerdier was one of the sons of a rich sugar planter, 
and, in consequence of it, considered himself as im- 
measurably above those who had not that peculiar ad- 
vantage. This was in his eye a title of nobility. The 
son of a wealthy cotton planter might come next to 
him and to all those who, like him, belonged to the 
molasses aristocracy. The Issue of a great merchant, 
or of a distinguished lawyer, or physician, was one, to 
be sure, who might be permitted to occupy a stool in 
the hall of the barons, provided all the arm-chairs were 
reserved for Yerdier and his compeers. But, as to 
those who proceeded from the loins of druggists, small 
traders, small farmers, mechanics, pedagogues, and 
such contemptible fry, they were merely the mud-sills 
of the social edifice of which he was one of the Corin- 
thian pillars. He was fond of talking of the luxuries 
of his home, particularly in the presence of those of 
his companions whom fortune had not treated so gra- 
ciously. Although a toady to those whose parents had 
the reputation of being far more wealthy than his own, he 
envied and maligned them intensely, and rejoiced when- 
ever something disagreeable happened to them. He 
was a thickset boy, with small grey eyes much resembl- 
ing those of a hog, and with well-knit and powerful 
protruding jaws indicating great capacity of mastica- 

m 


40 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


tioii and corresponding sensual appetites. He liad 
sandy hair which stood up like bristles on the back of a 
boar, and he had a jaundiced complexion characteristic 
of the envy which festered in his breast. To complete 
his portrait, I shall only add that he was gifted with a 
burly nose almost lapping over a wide and thin-lipped 
month, which was not embellished by the evident 
malignity of its eternal smile. That nose was truly a 
remarkable feature. It seemed to be always snuffing 
something from afar ; and that something was, as we 
all knew, some painful news for one or other of his 
comrades. AYhen the ill wind which brought evil to 
one of us, struck the broad nostrils of that nose, it 
heaved with a tremulous motion of pleasure. On the 
contrary, if some good fortune happened to any one of 
Yerdier’s acquaintances, and particularly to any one 
of those he called his friends, that nose swelled, as- 
sumed a purple hue, and bled profusely. I confess that 
I always saw with marked satisfaction the hemorrhage 
of that proboscis, as I well knew the cause of it. 
On such occasions he used to say that he was troubled 
with too much blood in the head, and that he was much 
relieved by its running out through his nasal organ. 
But we were not his dupes, and we were fond of ad- 
ministering to him that kind of relief. Thus, when- 
ever we heard of some windfall to any one of his friends, 
we were eager to announce it to him, and we said to 
each other: ‘‘Let us go and make Yerdier’s nose 
bleed!” Whenever he received any delicacies from 
his parents, he was sure to come and eat them in the 
presence of Trevigne, whom he invited to share them 
with him, but in a manner which strongly tempted me 
to knock him down. I need not say that his invitation 
was always refused. One of his tricks was, to des- 


FERxVANDO DE LEMOS. 


41 


cribe with affected pathos, within tlie hearing of Tre- 
vigne, the hardships of some poor family whom he pre- 
tended to know, and whom he would be happy to 
relieve through his fathers benevolent assistance, if 
that family’s foolish pride — a pride clothed in rags — did 
not stand in the way of their would-be benefactors. 
The art which he exhibited in lacerating the feelings of 
Trevigne with claws concealed under a velvet paw, 
was truly wonderful. The fact is, that he seemed to 
have made a most minute study of my friend’s heart, 
and wherever there happened to be any sore point in 
that heart, he had in readiness a venomous shaft to aim 
at and strike that particular point, right at the time 
when the most harm could be done. Indignant at the 
pertinacity of Yerdier’s hostility to my friend, I had at 
last begun to agitate the question in my own mind, 
w^hether I should not be justilied in waging savage war, 
for my own special gratification, against one who might 
be considered as a common epemy. 

One day, perched on the remaining fragment of a 
crumbling old wall, about six feet from the ground, Yer- 
dier was making a mock auction of a rusty, double-bar- 
reled gun without a stock. There was a crowd of boys 
bidding in fun. He stretched his arm the better to ex- 
hibit the article when he saw me approach with Tre- 
vigne, who, to look at it, raised his head, over which it 
happened to hang perpendicularly at that moment. 
Down came the heavy piece of iron, as if it had escaped 
accidentally from the hand which held it. The sharp 
breech of the gun struck Trevigne in the middle of the 
forehead at the root of his hair, and he fell senseless on 
his back, whilst a stream of blood spouted from his 
wound. I thought he was killed, and with malice 
prepense. To spring upon Yerdier with the fury of a ti- 


42 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


ger, to pull him from his elevated position, to strike him 
down to the ground, and almost to strangle the sus- 
pected felon to death, was but the affair of a moment, 
although he was stronger than I was. But I was so 
angry, that I had been suddenly endowed with the 
strength of manhood, and there was no telling how Yer- 
dier would have fared in that deadly struggle, if one of 
our proctors, who was not far off, had not come to his 
rescue. I felt as savage as the fiercest of the Co- 
manches ; and the other boys, gathering in affright 
round the prostrate form of Trevigne, who seemed to 
be dying, had not recovered sufficient presence of mind 
to turn their attentioTi to the two combatants. Trd- 
vigne recovered from the wound, although he long suf- 
fered from headaches in consequence of the blow which 
had inflicted it, but he carried to the grave the scar 
which it left. ISTot long after this event, I was stretched 
on the green sward of our play-grounds, with Trevigne 
by my side, to whom I was reading an ode of Horace, 
wdieii there came Yerdier, who, in the most conciliating 
manner he could assume, said to us : 

‘‘You, Trevigne, think that I am your enemy, and 
you, Fernando, think also that I am hostile to him. 
"Well, now, I am going to prove that you are both 
in error, by my giving to you a wholesome piece of 
advice, as you will see. That well-meant advice is, 
that you do not expose yourselves after this indiscreet 
fashion — you, Fernando, publicly teaching a lesson to 
Trevigne — and you, Trdvigne, learning that lesson 
from Fernando. It will conflrm what the whole school 
says already : that it is you, Fernando, who pushes Tre- 
vigne up the ladder, and that, without you, he could 
not have kept up with us in the classes. It is humiliat- 
in£^ to Trevigne — very; and I deeply regret it !” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


43 


Hardly had ho done speaking, when he was several 
yards off, his small grey eyes twinkling, and his probos- 
cis dilating as he walked away in the full enjoyment of 
his malicions remarks, whilst he left me speechless with 
astonishment, and Trevigne pale with -^mortiff cation. 
Our friendship became better cemented every day, as 
we went through the regular course of studies pursued 
in the college. The last year we had to remain there 
had arrived ; and, during a vacation occurring in the 
month of August, Trevigne and myself were saunter- 
ing in the public square in front of the cathedral. Hot- 
withstanding his efforts to conceal his real state of 
mind, I could observe that he was greatly dejected. 

Trevigne,” I said,. what is the matter with you? 
Have you secrets for me ? What troubles you, my 
-friend ?” He continued silent for a minute or two be- 
fore he replied : 

Fernando, I feel that it will soon be my duty to sup- 
port my family. A father and a mother who are grow- 
ing old, and my friendless and destitute sisters, have a 
right to look to me. I must make money for them and 
for my own maintenance. Make money ! How I hate 
the very thought ! And I have good reasons for it ; 
for I feel in the very marrow of my bones that the fac- 
ulty of making money is not in me. Men are. born 
with a certain aptitude and adaptation for the vocation 
Hature intends them for. I am puzzled to discover 
what she meant that I should be. Alas ! I am con- 
scious, and perhaps you are also aware of it, that I am 
incapable of those pursuits by which a living, if not a 
fortune, is made. Hence those anxieties which sadden 
me. I am constitutionally a dreamer — a drone in the 
bee-hive of a dollar-chasing society — a beggar warming 
himself and gilding his rags with the rays of an over- 


44 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


heated fancy, which bums with an inward fire that will 
only glow and irradiate to produce useless weeds, in- 
stead of those luxuriant harvests which have an ascer- 
tained value in the market. I curse myself in vain for 
my incurable infatuation and incapacity. Instead of 
preparing myself, as I ought, for the stern realities of 
a laborious and humble life, instead of thinking of suc- 
ceeding my father in his cigar shop, and of repaying the 
State for the costs of the education which I owe to her, 
by qualifying myself to be a meritorious justice of the 
peace, (this was said with a ghastly smile,) I take re- 
fuge in the land of romance. Notwithstanding all I 
can do to chase away the vagaries of a morbid imagina- 
tion, I completely fail, to my intense mortification. I 
for ever fancy myself living in courts and j^alaces, among 
knights, paladins, and high-born dames.' It h-as become 
an incessant and fatal obsession bordering on madness. 
I am haunted in my sleep by visions of splendor which 
mock at the squalidness of my waking hours !” 

He laughed bitterly and as if in scorn of himself. 
‘‘How would Yerdier sneer,” he said, “if he could 
guess at such folly ! But alas, what is more to be 
dreaded than the shafts of his malignity, is the con- 
sciousness that this madness of mine will destroy my 
usefulness, and that I shall remain for life a good-for- 
nothing pauper, incapable of being of any assistance to 
myself, or to those who are dependent on my exertions.” 

At this moment, he was interrupted by wild shrieks 
and the confused clamor of many voices. The shrieks 
were uttered by a woman, and the clamor was raised by 
a number of juvenile ragamuffins who were in pursuit 
of her. Mariquita, surnamed “ La calentura^'^ was well 
known to every body in New Orleans. She was an old 
Spanish gypsy, who for years had appeared to have no 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


45 


other domicil than the streets of the cit}^ Whence and 
how she came there, and how she contrived to live, no- 
body knew or eared. She would vanish completely at 
times,, and, on her re-appearance, mischievous boys who 
loved to tease the poor creature, would say to her: 
“ Where do you come from, old Mariquita ? Have you 
returned from the sabbath of the witches ? Where have 
you hidden the broomstick on which you rode O ! how 
slie cursed them, the old gypsy ! Yerily, she could not 
be beaten at that. And how the urchins would shout 
with glee and clap their hands, as she became more and 
more infuriated by their taunts ! She used to station 
hei’self at the. foot of one of the towers of the cathe- 
dral, where she chose to beg for alms, and there is in 
existence an admirable picture made by a distinguished 
artist, representing the hag cooking her food at night, 
in that spot which was one of predilection with her. The 
reflex of the light on her face as she bends over the fire 
on which her kettle stands, produces a striking effect 
amidst the enclosing darkness. She was called* “^<3^ 
ealenturay^ because she seemed to be always shaking 
with the ague. 

Mariquita was of a diminutive size ; her complexion 
denoted her origin, and her tiny features drawn up into 
a knot of wrinkles made her face look like a boiled ap- 
ple. The most conspicuous point in that face was her 
little nose, on account of the noticeable manner in 
which it was besmeared with snuff. At the time when 
I introduce her to the reader,' she stood at bay Avhere 
now is erected the equestrian statue of General Jack- 
son. She put me in mind of an owl venturing into 
daylight out of its habitual shelter, and attacked by the 
small fry of the feathered tribe. After the same fash- 

* Calentura means fever ” in Spanish. 


46 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


ion, a score or two of bojs were pecking at poor Mari- 
qiiita, and some of tliem seemed to be intent on pulling 
off tbe blue and yellow striped kerchief which she wore 
round her head. They flew at her, each in his turn, 
amidst the shouts, the jeers, and the loud glee which 
her stout defence elicited. Surrounded by those ma- 
hcious imps, she kept wheeling round with great alert- 
ness to ward them off, and she foiled every attack by 
directing her sharp claws at the faces of her youthful 
persecutors. She seemed convulsed with rage. At 
last one of the urchins, at the very moment we were 
thinking of interfering for her protection, availed him- 
self of the opportunity of a front attack by one of his 
companions, and charging in the rear, carried away the 
coveted head-dress before Mariquita could turn round 
to meet him. Her disheveled locks, white as snow, fell 
down her shoulders, and yells of triumph sounded in her 
ears. To the astonishment of the little blackguard 
crew, who expected a fresh outburst of passion on the 
part* of their victim, she stood stock still, as motionless 
as a statue. Her piercing shrieks and violent gesticu- 
lations had suddenly ceased. Ridiculous in her impo- 
tent fury, she had become imposing in the calm attitude 
she had assumed. Deadly pale, self-collected, and hold- 
ing her feelings apparently under complete subjugation, 
she bent on her tormentors a long steady look, so full 
of the most intense hatred, that they shrank before it, 
and gathered into a cluster, as if to guard against some 
impending danger. They seemed to be bewildered at 
the sudden transformation which they witnessed. The 
old gypsy thus addressed them with slow and distinct 
emphasis, strikingly contrasting with the rapid, inco- 
herent, and inarticulate manner in which she used to 
speak : 


FERNANDO DE LEAfOS, 


47 


Vile race of vipers ! ignoble brood worthy of your 
swinisli parents, get yon home to your styes. I curse 
you in the present and in the future ; I curse you from 
the crown of your heads to the sole of your feet ; I 
curse you in every joint of your bodies and in the very 
marrow of your bones ; I curse you in the flesh and jn 
the spirit ; I curse you with Are and with water, with' 
known and unknown pestilences, and with what is the 
direst of all evils — subjugation by a merciless foe. Do 
you think, unmannered imps of transported convicts, 
that the gray hair of the daughter of Eblis, of the last 
representative of a long line of eastern seers, can be 
insulted with impunity ? Listen, you wretches ; know 
that the blear-eyed avenger will come ; I read your fate 
in those yonder stars which are now appearing one 
after the other over your heads. Before you descend 
into your graves, and some of you will have ‘ bloody 
ones, and those that have them will be the most fortun- 
ate, you wdll be trampled under the iron-shod heels of 
conquest. Your very slaves, those blacks who now un- 
tie your shoe-strings, will strut in these very streets 
with glittering bayonets ; they will lord it over you ; 
they will drag you to jail like felons ; they will be your 
judges and your legislators ; and you will crouch under 
the lash like curs; unheard-of indignities will be heap- 
ed upon you ; and you will not even know how to kill, 
or to die. Avaunt ! And when what is to come shall 
have happened, remember the words of the poor old 
gypsy who has been so long your foot-ball and play- 
thing.” 

She turned ‘away from them -and saw us standing 
wdthin a few feet of her. To our surprise, she looked 
at Trdvigne with inefiable tenderness, and said to him : 
“JS^ot to thee, my son, not to thee do these curses cling. 


48 


FERNANDO DE LEMCS. 


I spoke to the young ravens, and not to the eaglet, who 
shall yet take his flight to the sun, now hidden by 
stormy clouds.” She kissed her withered hand to him 
and hurried away, talking wildly to herself in an un- 
known language, and with her long white loc'ks stream- 
ing behind her, a sport to the evening breeze. She was 
soon lost in the distance and in the increasing shades 
of night. 


CHAPTER V. 


TREVIGIfE, THE POOR LAD EDUCATED AT THE COST OP THE 

STATE, TURNS OUT TO BE A GRANDEE OF SPAIN. — FERNAN- 
DO DE DEMOS TRAVELS IN EUROPE. 

A SHORT time after tlie incident wliicli I related in 
the preceding chapter, my friend Trevigne lost his 
mother ; and, after having headed the meagre procession 
which escorted his wife’s coffin to the burial ground, 
old Trevigne, his father, took to his bed. Those who had 
seen him at the funeral, had been impressed with the 
conviction that his days would not be long in the land. 
His uneven, irregular steps, his pallid cheeks and his 
sunken eyes, were unmistakable signs that the heart 
which had struggled against so much woe and so much 
of the unrelenting decree of fate, would struggle no 
more. Some vital chord had snapped in that mysteri- 
ous organ of the human body, and it was evident that 
the workings of the organ itself would soon cease. 
Anxious to show my sympathies when death and sor- 
row had entered the household of him wffiom I loved 
so much, I was with Trevigne every day, offering my 
services and consolations, but I never was permitted to 
enter the patient’s room. The end w^as rapidly ap- 
proaching, when, one morning, Trevigne came out of 
the bed-chamber of the sick man with tears in his eyes, 
and said to me : “ My father is dying, and wishes for 
the first time to see Father Antonio. Hasten to bring 
3 ( 49 ) 


60 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


him here.” This was something unexpected, consider- 
ing the patient’s antecedents and idiosyncracj. I de- 
parted with full speed, and the priest was soon at the 
post where he was desired. The sick man ordered 
every body out of the room, and remained closeted 
more than two hours with the minister of God. At 
last the door opened, and Father Antonio appeared. 
He was much agitated, and informed us that the pa- 
tient had expired in his arms after confession and after 
having received the consolations of religion ; he took 
leave of the afflicted family, assuring them that he 
would soon return. There was in the priest’s face an 
expression which I could not but notice. It seemed to 
be a compound of horror and pity, and I observed that, 
as he walked out of the house, he crossed himself re- 
peatedly. After having assisted my friend in paying 
his last duties to the dead, hearing that my mother 
was sick in a distant part of the State where she was 
visiting her sister, I departed hastily to meet her. On 
my return to the city two months afterwards, what was 
my surprise, when, calling at the house of Trevigne, I 
found it closed and uninhabited! I inquired of a 
neighbor what had become of Trevigne and his two 
sisters. He could give me no information, and said 
they had moved away in the night, nobody knew 
whither. I felt bewildered at the strangeness of the 
circumstance, but the idea occurring to me that Father 
Antonio might throw light on it, I was soon knocking 
at his door. The priest opened it himself, and wel- 
comed me with a benevolent smile. “ I guess,” he 
said, “what brings you here. You wish to know what 
has become of Trevigne.” I nodded assent. “ I could 
tell you, but you must curb your impatience. He de- 
sires to be the first to communicate to you the inforrna- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


51 


tion you seek after. You will receive a letter from him, 
probably before long. In the meantime, check your 
curiosity. Go home, bgfve no anxiety, your friend is 
doing well; but, when devoutly inclined, pray for the 
soul of bis father.” He tapped me gently on the cheek 
as if I bad not ceased to be a bo}^, and dismissed me 
after having given me bis blessing. Hot long after 
this interview with Father Antonio, I received the fol- 
lowing letter : 

“Madrid, September 20, 18 — . 

“Dear Fernando, — It is a trite and true saying: 
that there is more romance in the realities of life than in 
the tales of fiction. You loved the half-starving son of 
the keeper of a cigar shop ; I hope you will not 
cease to entertain the same feeling for the Count 
of Trevino, grandee of Spain, and the head of one 
of the most illustrious and wealthiest houses of 
that kingdom. My beloved sisters are engaged to 

be married, one to the Duke of A , and the 

other to the Marquis of C . My heart is over- 

flowing with gratitude to God. I flatter myself that 
I shall never forget the humble condition from which 
it has pleased Him to raise me. In remembrance 
of it, I have already appropriated a large sum to the 
erection of a hospital for the poor in this city. As to 
the events which compelled my father to fly from 
Spain, and to conceal his rank and misfortunes even 
from his wife and children, they are of such a nature 
that it is better not to allude to them. It would be the 
saddest of tales. It harrows my very soul to think of 
it. My consolation is, that m}^ father was more to be 
pitied than blamed. I owe to the efforts of the Infan- 
te Hon Carlos, brother of the king, my restoration to 


52 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


forfeited rank and wealth. He and my father had 
grown up together almost from the cradle, and were 
united liy the ties of the tenderest and firmest friend- 
ship. I[e calls me his son, and treats me as such . . . 

“Mariquita la calentura^ the prophetess whom you 
may remember, is here with me. This devoted menial 
of our house had managed to follow my father against 
his will, and notwithstanding his threats. He never 
permitted her to approach him in Hew Orleans. The 
poor thing kept faithfully his secret, contrived to live 
God knows how, and thought it was happiness enough 
for her to look at my father as he passed along in the 
streets. It is amusing to see how she queens it now. 
"Well, she has a right to be indulged in anything she 
pleases, and to cut all sorts of antics. She bore adver- 
sity stoutly,/ but joy has somewhat crazed her. My 
felicity would be complete if you could come to me. 
But I know and respect the ties which bind you to 
Louisiana. Far be it from me to try to loosen them. I 
will myself ever remain true to her, and will not for- 
get that I was born in her bosom, although now a 
Spaniard. I hope however to welcome you in my 
new home, on some day or other, if you are ever free 
and disposed to travel. 

I send you a draft for ten thousand dollai-s, to be 
secretly distributed among the destitute in Hew Or- 
leans by Father Antonio. But let those who may ob- 
tain relief not know whence it comes. I insist on 
that.” The rest related to matters of a confidential 
nature, which could not be of any interest to the reader, 
and is therefore suppressed. 

I was leaving the post-office with this letter in my 
pocket, when I met Yerdier. Oh ! oh !” said he, “I 
am glad to sec you at last ; I missed you so much I J 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


53 


have been wanting to know what has become of the 
Trevigne family. There are many rumors about their 
sudden and nocturnal disappearance. It is generally 
believed that tliey were so heavily in debt, that they 
had to run away from their creditors like scared rats. 
Their grocer, I am told, who trusted them so much, 
although he was repeatedly warned to be cautious, is 
in fur two hundred dollars.” 

This is news to md,” said I ; “ but to put an end 
at once to such reports as may be circulated by good- 
natured people, who take too lively an interest in the 
affairs of the Trevigne family, I wish you to have it as 
extensively known as possible that I am ready to pay 
all their debts.” 

Indeed, indeed !” exclaimed Yerdier. “ If so, they 
surely cannot have debts and have not duped any 
body. You v/ould not gratuitously assume the risks 
of such an engagement, that is clear ; nor should I be 
astonished if you knew where they burrow.” 

I do,” said I, and taking the letter out of my 
pocket, it delighted me to pour into his ears, slowly, 
and drop after drop burning like liquid hre, as I well 
knew, all the information which I had just received 
concerning Trevigne. I watched Yerdier’s face as I 
spoke. It became pale, then yellow, then red. He 
gasped for breath ; a sickly smile contorted his hps, 
which stammered out these words : 

‘‘ Upon my honor, I am so happy to hear of such a 
change in Trevigno’s circumstances. I have always 
been his friend, although I know you never gave mo 
credit for it. Don’t you forget, when you write, to 
compliment him on my part.” 

He had hardly tinished this sentence, when his pro- 
boscis, which had been swelling like an angry and ven- 


54 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


omous snake, squirted a jet of blood which would 
have struck me full in the breast, if I had not hastily 
retreated. I left him leaning against a lamp-post, with 
his big nose bleeding profusely, and I w^ent away re- 
joicing at the self-inflicted torture, which, by a just 
dispensation of Providence, ever exists in the breast of 
the envious. 

Years elapsed. Bowed down with bad health, dis- 
appointments and grief, I crossed the Atlantic. When 
I arrived in Paris in the beginning of August, three of 
the best physicians of that city w^ho met to examine 
my condition, agreed in declaring, to use a familiar lo- 
cution, that I was in a very bad way, and advised me, 
as the favorable season for it was not yet over, to try 
the mineral waters of Leuk, or Lou^che, as the French 
call it, in Switzerland. I did so, and I found it no 
very attractive place. It seemed to me that I was at 
the bottom of a well of two thousand feet. I confess 
that I did not feel much admiration for the gloomy 
mountains which towered perpendicularly around me, 
and of which Ihe most forbidding and the most famous, 
if I recollect right, was the Guemmi. They were as- 
cended and descended by the means of a succession of 
ladders, that hung down over places which otherwise 
would have been impracticable, and it was one of the 
few amusements of the visitors of these springs to gaze 
at the peasantry of the country, males and females, 
wdien they risked life and limbs in such perilous as- 
cents and descents with burdens on their heads, or shoul- 
ders. At the distance from which we looked at them, 
they appeared to us like large bugs, or other insects, 
issuing out of the earth and creeping on the sides of 
the mountains. Those who frequented Leuk, or Lou^- 
che, for their health, (for I cannot suppose that any one 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


55 


ever came to so dull a locality for any other p arpose) 
had to bathe with a sort of fanatic perseverance during 
three mortally tedious weeks, at the rate of five hours 
a day, in large contiguous pools, or basins, which con- 
tained each from fifteen to twenty persons. Before 
the bathers fioated small tables on which they took 
their breakfast, and on which, when that was over, were 
set materials for writing, reading, playing cards, or 
chess, or any other game, as they pleased. Those who 
liked it better, kept up, much to the annoyance of 
others more seriously engaged, a rattling conversation 
with friends who stood in the galleries which hung 
over the pools. ■ The object of such prolonged bathing 
w^as to produce a cutaneous eruption, which made one 
look like a scarlet-fever patient. The lucky individual 
who had the most abundant and the reddest eruption, 
bragged of it, and looked down with lofty superiority on 
those whose skin had not been heated into so fine a 
crop of fiery-looking pimples. I was one of those un- 
fortunate beings who soaked themselves in vain for hours, 
morning after morning, in tedious succession. My skin 
remained obstinately determined not to redden at all. 

I happened one day to be moping in a retired spot 
over the unimproving condition of my health, when I 
saw the German prince of Tied approaching. I had 
frequently met him at the baths, but we had never be- 
come acquainted with each other. He took a seat on the 
bench on which 1 sat, and bowing to me, said : 

I have observed with regret, sir, that you appear to 
sufier a great deal, and that you do not improve. The 
waters seem to be doing you no good.” 

Ho good whatever,” I replied, and it is a sad dis- 
appointment to one who has come from so very tar in 
pursuit. of health.” 


56 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


From so very far echoed the priiice. “ Are you 
not a Frenchman?” 

“JSTo, sir/’ was my reply ; and, as I saw that he seeim 
ed to expect that I should say more, I added : I am 
an American.” 

Ha ! From what part of America ?” 

Hemai-king the curiosity and interest which he evinc- 
ed, I answered with a smile: “^‘From the United States 
in general and from Louisiana in particular.” 

Indeed ! indeed !” he exclaimed. Well, I am glad 
of it, for I like to talk and be informed about your 
country, to which hosts of our Germans are emigrating. 
It has been thus far a heaven-blessed country, with the 
most splendid destinies if you remain virtuous and wise. 
My brother has traveled all over the United States, and 
has brought back a most valuable collection of plants, 
minerals, animals, birds, fishes and other curiosities.” 

• We had a long conversation, which seemed to be 
much relished by my new acquaintance. From that day, 
that amiable gentleman frequently sought me, inquired 
kindly after my health, and apparently took much pleas- 
ure in eliciting from me all the information I could give 
him on the political and social condition, the agricultur- 
al, commercial, financial and various other resources of 
the vast territory over which waves the Star-Spangled 
Banner. One day he said to me : 

“I come to bid you farewell. I am going away, and 
I advise you to do the same. The watering season is 
almost over. Leuk does not suit your case ; believe me, 
for I am somewhat of a physician. Eeturn to Paris, 
winter there, amuse yourself, drive away the blue-devils, 
and, next summer, visit Carlsbad. That is the place for 
you, above all. On your way thither, you will have to 
pass thrc ugh my liliputian principality. Don’t hastily 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


67 


jump over it witli those loug American legs which are 

accustomed to so much space. But stop at , where 

I reside. Here is my card ; send it to me as soon as 
you arrive. It will afford me much gratification to 
show you my brother’s collection. It will put you in 
mind of home, and it will gladden your heart to see so 
many things from your fatherland. It will be like a 
sunny glimpse of your native heath.’’ 

I thanked him, as I ought, for his extreme kindness. 

In the meantime,” he continued, “ when ^mu go to 
Paris, consult Korefi*, ex-physician of the king of Prus- 
sia, who lives in that city. He is a man of genius, but 
a most unprincipled fellow. Be on your guard. Tell 
him that I commend you to his care and skill, and that I 
beg him not to be extortionate, as he is apt to be. Do 
not scruple to repeat iny very words.” 

According to the prince’s advice, I saw Koreff, and 
delivered, as smoothly as possible, the message which had 
been sent to him. Ho ! ho !” he exclaimed ; I recog- 
nize the prince. It is just like him. Well, what does 
he complain of? Princes must pay like princes. But I 
shall be moderate with you.” 

As his idea of moderation might be very difiej’ent 
from mine, and as the prince’s warning was still fresh 
in my mind, I insisted on knowing precisely what he 
would charge for his attendance. “ Ten francs a visit,” 
he said. ‘‘ Is that too much ?” 

“ It will be pretty heavy on me,” I replied, should 
it be of long continuance ; but let it be so.” • Thus I 
secured the services of the ^‘man of genius,” without 
exposing myself to the extortions of the unprinciified 
fellow,” as the prince had called him. World to God 
that I had thus been cautious ull my life ! 

I frequently met the doctor in the saloons of Paris, 
^ 3 * 


68 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


and heard it whispered that he was a Prussian spy. He 
was a man of sparkling wit and vast erudition, but his 
morality was rather worn threadbare, and its elbows 
came out of its sleeves, as witnessed by the bill of five 
hundred thousand francs which he had the audacity to 
present to the Scotch duke of Hamilton, for having 
attended during six months Lady Douglas, the daugh- 
ter of that nobleman. The duke refused to pay, and 
was stepping into his carriage for his final departure 
from France, after having tendered thirty thousand 
francs to Koreff, when he was arrested and had to give 
security for the sum claimed, before he could be set at 
liberty. The indignation of the faubourg St. Germain 
was intense. The arrest of the duke under such cir- 
cumstances was considered an insult to nobility through 
out the world. When the cause came for trial, the court 
showed as much excitement as the noble faubourg. 
Hardly had the counsel for plaintifi* begun, when the 
presiding judge stopped him, saying : “ It is useless for 

you to proceed. The court is sufiiciently informed and 
Avill hear no more. Sit down, Mr. barrister; let the 
plaintift* come forth and stand up at the bar.” 

The plaiiitifi* obeyed. “ We regret,” continued the pre- 
siding judge in the name of his colleagues^, and with a 
harsh tone, “ that the defendant has tendered and deposit- 
ed in court for your benefit thirty thousand francs. It is an 
exorbitant remuneration to which you are not entitled. 
But it is not within the discretion of the court not to 
award you what the defendant is willing to pay. Judg- 
ment is therefore rendered in your favor for thirty thous- 
and francs, but you shall pay the costs. When you pre- 
sented your monstrous claim and instituted this suit, 
you must have relied on the supposed probability, that 
the duke would rather pay what you asked, than per- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


59 


mit the details of his daughter’s infirmities and of the 
treatment you prescribed, to he brought before the pub- 
lic. Your nefarious speculation shall be defeated. The 
court must say that you are a disgrace to your profes- 
sion, and we hope that the minister of justice will take 
it into consideration.” 

Such is the synopsis of what the court said. As de- 
sired by the tribunal, the minister took the case in hand, 
and withdrew from the ‘^man of genius,” who had 
stooped to be an “ unprincipled fellow,” the license to 
practice his profession in France. 


CHAPTEE YI. 


LOUIS PHILIPPE AKD THE HANGMAN OF PARIS. — A STRANGE 
PROPHECY SUBSEQUENTLY VERIFIED. 

I BECAME acquainted at Leuk with Casimir Perier, 
the son of the famous minister of that name under 
Louis Philippe. He had lately returned from Spain, 
where he had been an attache to the French embassy. 
He gave me the most interesting details on the civil 
war which was then raging in that country between 
tlie Carlists and tlie Christinos. I never tired of listen- 
ing to his relation of the public events which he had 
witnessed, and to his delineations of the characters of 
the principal actors on that bloody stage. I learned 
from him, to my intense chagrin, that Trevigne had 
not kept aloof from that fratricidal war, and that he 
was in the camp of Hon Carlos. ‘‘Isabella,” said 
Perier, “ has no general whom she can oppose success- 
fully to such leaders as Trevigne and Zumalacarregui, 
particularly the latter, who is a great captain by inspir- 
ation, and who, if he live, will in the end put Don 
Carlos on the throne.” 0 ! how I longed to be 
with the beloved companion of my boyhood, and to 
bear him away, if possible, from the danger which I 
thought he had sought without necessity ! A civil 
war ! the most abject and dreadful of all wars 1 
“ What possesses him ?” I said to myself. “ Could he 
not, like many others, refrain from taking a part in 
that sanguinary struggle which has converted Spain 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


61 


into a pandemonium? Why should he wish to lose so 
soon what ho has so lately gained?” Thus I reasoned, 
forgetful of my rooted belief in destiny. But such are 
the inconsistencies of man. His convictions, his ac- 
tions and his feelings often clash together in glaring 
contradictions. 

I left Leuk without having experienced the slightest- 
benefit from its waters. Just as I approached the city 
of Dijon, the former capital of the old duchy of Bur- 
gundy, the public coach in which I was, stopped at a 
small village, and took in a passenger. He was the 
thinnest and sallowest man I had ever seen. He put 
me in mind of those long hollow reeds, called sarba- 
canes^ which I used in my boyhood to kill small birds, 
with arrows propelled through the tube by the mere 
force of my breath. We engaged in conversation. In 
the course of it, I mentioned that I had been trying the 
waters of Leuk. 

‘‘ I see,” he said peevishly, “ that you have been 
duped like myself, and made a fool of, excuse the ex- 
pression. Those abominable physicians, those patented 
charlatans, whom we have the weakness to consult, and 
who thrive on the rich fund of credulity with which 
Nature has endowed mankind, had reduced me to the 
condition of a chronic simpleton ; for they had, during 
a quarter of a century, sent me every year to some 
watering place. But, thank God, I am cured at last of 
my folly, and, as I am much older than you are, allow 
me, for your profit as an invalid, which you seem to 
be, to relate what has recently happened to me. You 
see, sir, how thin I am, although I have a most' excel- 
lent appetite and unequaled powers of digestion. This 
extraordinary thinness has always made me extremely 
miserable, for my greatest ambition is to be fat.” 


62 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


Heie his head drooped to his breast, as if yielding 
to the weight of a too painful thought, and he sighed 
heavily, as if oppressed with much affliction. “Yes, 
sir,” he continued in a tone of indignation, caused 
probably by his feeling too acutely the harshness with 
which he was treated by Providence and the physi- 
cians. “ I have been striving in vain for the last forty 
years to gain flesh. I contented myself at flrst with 
devouring an enormous quantity of turkeys, capons, 
beefsteaks, mutton chops, Irish potatoes and other far- 
inaceous substances, hut to no purpose. I went to 
England, associated with none hut London aldermen, 
studied their diet, conformed to their habits, drank in- 
numerable casks of porter, and remained as thin as 
ever. In despair I threw myself into the hands of the 
learned faculty of medicine. They converted me into 
an alembic of drugs, and when I became rebellious at 
last, they sent me successively to every known water- 
ing place in Europe. I come now from Mont D’Or, 
where, after using the waters internally and externally 
for a whole month, I complained to the physician of 
the place that I was growing thinner, if possible. 

“ ‘ Have faith and patience,’ he answered. ‘ Do you 
not meet occasionally in your walks, an individual who 
is almost as large as an elephant, and who seems im- 
bedded in a ton of lard, which melts into heavy drops 
as he moves along? Well, when he came here, three 
months ago, he had less substance than yourself. How 
he is a mountain of flesh. In vain do I teU him to 
stop. He goes on drinking, bathing and swelling, so 
delighted is he with the change which has taken place 
in his person. He maintains that he cannot take too 
much of a good thing. It is the fanaticism of corpu- 
lence.’ 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


63 


“ Of course, with such an instance of the efficacy of 
the waters before inj eyes, it would have been very 
wrong to despond. I determined to persevere. But, 
the next day, when in my bath as punctually as usual, 
the door of the room next to mine opened, somebody 
entered, and I overheard the following conversation : 
‘ Doctor,’ said a gruff voice in tones of subdued anger, 
‘ I have sent for you to convince you by actual exhibi- 
tion, that I am growing fatter and fatter. I consult 
you every day ; you soothe me with fair promises, and 
you regularly pocket your fees without succeeding, 
with all your scientific prescriptions aided by the mar- 
velous virtues of your mineral waters, in removing one 
ounce of flesh from my ribs.’ 

“ ‘ Have faith and patience,’ replied the doctor. ^ Do 
you occasionally meet in your walks a prodigiously thin 
man ?’ 

“ ‘ Certainly,’ answered the patient. ‘ I could not 
but notice him. He is a shadow, an impalpable thing, 
a sort of condensation of vapor assuming somewhat the 
indistinct lines of a human shape. What then V 

‘‘ ‘ Well, when he came here, my dear sir, he was fat- 
ter than you are. Will you continue to say : What 
then f 

“ I heard no more, I jumped out of my bath, and de- 
parted in a hurry for home, swearing an eternal adieu 
to all watering places.” Thus spoke the man of bones 
and no flesh. 

When I arrived at Paris on my return from Leuk, I 
endeavored, as I had done before, to correspond with 
Trevigne. But civil wars play sad havoc with the 
transportation of mails ; my letters did not reach their 
destination. Although my physical and mental suffer- 
ings at the time were such as to make every minute of 


64 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


existence appear to me an age of agon)^, I determined 
to lash myself into active life. I went sight-seeing, 
and figured in society as it is said in common parlance, 
with a smile on my face and a suppressed groan at the 
bottom of my heart. I saw the gorgeousness of palaces 
and the squalidness of the haunts of the poor. I was 
presented to the king. He had been under the roof . 
of my grandfather in Louisiana, and one of my kins- 
men had come to his relief when he w’as proscribed 
and in want. He remembered it, and treated me 
with kindness. The king has now no other roof to 
shelter him than the vault of an English tomb, his sons 
are in exile, and he who witnessed their royal splendor 
has also felt the vicissitudes of fortune, and is in his 
own native land a ruined man, a political' outlaw, a 
sort of nondescript being who is declared to be without 
rights. Truly it is sad to live many years. The king 
spoke well and impressively, and was fond of showing 
that he possessed that faculty. Like Ulysses, mores homi- 
num muUorum vidit et urbes.^ One who pretended to 
know him thoroughly, told me that he had no decision 
of character, and maintained that, should his sister, 
Madame Adelaide, die before him, whom she entirely 
governed, he would appear before the world in the 
light of a weak and irresolute man. Was there any 
truth in this assertion ? The fact is, that the king fell 
from the throne a short time after the death of his royal 
sister and adviser, and made on that occasion a lament- 
able display of pusillanimity and vacillation. About 
five years before that memorable event, all the legiti- 
mist journals and organs came out with one common 
accord in favor of universal suffrage. Meeting one of 

* Like Ulj’sscR, he had visited many cities, and seen the manners and 
customs of many men. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


65 


the staunchest partizans of the dynasty for which Louis 
Philippe had been substituted, and knowing that he 
was among the most influential of that party, I asked 
him for an explanation of that abrupt deviation from 
their old and cherished principles. 

‘‘It is,” he said with vehemence, “to pull down the 
rascal who pollutes the Tuileries.” Meaning Louis 
Philippe, of course. 

“ What will you put in the place of the democratic 
crown of the citizen king V' I asked. 

“ A republic,” he replied, “ will certainly spring up 
from the gutters of Paris.” ' 

“ What next ?” 

“ The republic will be of short duration.” 

“ What will follow ?” 

“A dictator, perhaps a Napoleon.” 

“ Is it in this way,” I said, “ that you intend to bring 
back the Duke of Bordeaux ?” 

“Yes. We shall not be again such fools as to have 
recourse to foreign bayonets. Our plan is to gorge 
France with the sweetmeats of a republic, and next, 
with the rotten flesh-pots of an upstart imperial regime, 
until she vomits the poisonous substance on which she 
shall have feasted. Then we shall have, not a transient, 
but a permanent restoration of the elder branch of the 
Bourbons. After having swallowed the republic and 
the empire and found them indigestible, the French will 
have no further experiment to make, and will return to 
their old line of kings and to the monarchy of St. Louis, 
wdth such modifications as the present may require to 
suit modern wants and ideas. It is evident that insti- 
tutions which lasted a thousand years, had in them 
something better than can be offered by those which 
spring up like mushrooms from the rank soil of revolu- 


66 


FEI^NANDO DE LEMOS. 


tions, and which perish as rapidly. Duration is the 
test of the goodness and fitness of human institutions. 
We want the very populace of Paris to make that dis- 
covery. We want the masses, the common laborers, 
those who work with arms bare to the elbow, who wear 
dirty shirts and wooden shoes, to go by a spontaneous 
movement to the frontier, recall Henry Y, and carry 
him back in popular triumph to the palace of his ances- 
tors.” 

By the soul of the Cumaean Sybil, this legitimist had 
read accurately in the book of fate ! For, thus far his 
predictions have been accomplished. The question of 
reform and universal suffrage shattered the throne of 
the citizen king — then came the republic with Ledru- 
Bollin and Lamartine — then the empire with Louis 
Hapoleon. The second empire has sunk into an ocean 
of blood. What next? We must wait, time will 
answer. 

The last occasion on which I met the king was at the 
Tuileries, at a ball to which I had been invited. Among 
other things he said to me : “ I do not wish to be 
a prophet of evil, but . . . (and he seemed to hesitate 
a little) much as I admire the Americans and their 
institutions, (was it not Irish blarney, O king !) they 
cannot be as a people, entirely above those passions 
which are inherent in human nature. You have con- 
fiicting interests and ambitions, and unappeasable jeal- 
ousies. You have the puritans in the FTorth and the 
cavaliers in the South, democracy with its levelling rod 
in one section of the country, and aristocracy with 
slavery raising its haughty head in the other section, 
and creating a social elegance, a superiority of breed- 
ing and race which must excite the intense ha-tred of 
yom- antagonists, who will be made to feel their in- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


67 


feriority in that talent of government and statesman- 
ship, and in that nameless and indescribable refinement 
and charm of manner which have always characterized 
all aristocracies. Hence deadly conflicts, the conse- 
quences of which it is impossible to foresee. Yoa will 
perhaps before long, like the rest of mankind, have 
political convulsions and social transformations. We 
live fast in this age. Yon are yoting enough to see 
many wonderful changes rn this ever-changing wmrld ! 
Should the wind of revolution ever blow down your 
paternal house in Louisiana, souvenez vous que la 
France est la patrie des exiles^ et qu^elle a U7i cmur 
pour toutes les infortunenr^ This was graciously and 
royally spoken, and made me bow low in return, but I 
wish that there had been less of the spirit of prophecy 
in it. Where is now the Orleans dynasty ? and what 
of me ? Alas ! 

I am fond of contrasts. Therefore, after having 
visited the king, I called on Sanson, the hereditary 
public executioner- of Paris. I had heard that he had 
a liniment which had remarkable curative powers. 
This was at once a pretext for approaching that famous 
personage, famous although at the lowest step of the 
social ladder. A servant received me courteously, and 
ushered me into a very extensive library opening on a 
beautiful garden, in which was an elderly man who, I 
was told, was Sanson, and who was watering flowers 
with tender care and with the same hand which had 
cut oflf so many heads. He soon came to meet me, and 
I was struck with his polished address. I stated the object 
of my visit, and informed him that I had come from 
the United States in quest of health. 

* Remember that Franee is the home of the exile, aad that she has a 
heart that sympathizes with all misfortunes. 


68 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


‘‘Ha! indeed,” lie said, “you are from tlie United 
States ! I have always taken the liveliest interest in 
your country, and pray, from what particular State are 
you?” 

“ From Louisiana.” 

“ Ho ! ho 1 Louisiana I A singular coincidence ! 
I have just been reading with pleasure a historical 
essay on that subject by one of her native writers. I 
am glad to see you, for I assure you that I have always 
desired to meet somebody well acquainted with that 
former colony of France. She has never ceased to be 
a favorite with me, and for particular reasons. My at- 
tention was turned to her in my early boyhood. Will 
you permit me to inquire after her present condition ?” 

He put to me many questions which showed that he 
was really interested in the subject. He was so minute- 
ly acquainted with her topography, with the peculiari- 
ties of her soil, and with her innumerable and intricate 
water courses, with her commercial and agricultural re- 
sources, with her political and social history, that I 
looked at him with much surprise, and said : “ Surely, 
sir, you must have been in Louisiana.” 

“Hever,” he replied, “but at the beginning of the 
French revolution, which deluged this country with 
blood, my father had resolved to fly with his family to 
Louisiana, and I prepai-ed myself for it by procuring as 
much information as I could about our intended home. 
Had we been able to execute our plan ”... 

He paused, hung down his head, and did not finish- 
the phrase. Something like the shadow of painful 
memories had flitted over his face, as I thought, but he 
soon renewed the conversation with animation. He 
certainly was more accurately and extensively informed 
ill relacioii to the condition, history, laws, polities and 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. G9 

resources of the United States, than any statesman T 
ever met in France. I was amazed at the variety and 
deptli of his erudition, which he seemed to pour out 
with evident pleasure, but, I must say, without pedantic 
affectation. He had readily seized, I suppose, a rare 
opportunity afforded him to communicate his intellec- 
tual wealth. There was no ostentation, however, and no 
want of good taste, and I must confess that I took pains 
to draw him. out as much as was consistent with pro- 
priety and good breeding. In the strangeness and 
novelty of my situation there was something wliicli de- 
lighted me, but I had at last to caU his attention to the 
particular object of my visit. I wanted his liniment. 

“What is the nature of your disease?” he inquired. 
I stated it with details. He listened attentively, and 
replied : 

“ I am no mean adept in medicine, for which I have 
a natural turn, and which I have studied a good deal. 
I regret to say that my liniment will do you uo good.” 

I insisted on trying it, rather to leave some remunera- 
tive souvenir of my visit, than to make an* experiment 
of the virtues of the drug. But he peremptorily re- 
fused to sell it, “because his conscience,” he said, 
“ did not permit him to receive money for what could 
be of no service to me.” I rose to retire, Sanson ac- 
companied me to the door, and bowed me out according 
to the requirements of the most punctilious etiquette. 
When I reached le 'boulevard des Italiens^ I met a 
friend who asked me where I came from. I replied : 
“ From the house of one of the most learned and re- 
fined gentlemen of France.” 

“ Who is he ?” 

“ The hangman of Paris.” 


CHAPTEK Vn. 


CONTINUATION OF FERNANDO’S TRAVELS IN EUROPE. 

At the end of the winter, I went to a fancy ball at 
the hotel of the Spanish ambassador. There, of course, 
I saw many Spaniards, and heard of the news of the 
day — the death of Zumalacarregiii. The general im- 
pression was, that with him had died all hope of suc- 
cess for the cause of Don Carlos. His genius was 
already turning the scales in favor of the pretender, 
when a bullet cut short his career. O Providence ! a 
crown is lost, the fate of a nation is changed — by what? 
— a little piece of lead, which was sped in one direc- 
tion rather than in another by a fellow paid two cents 
a day to do that kind of work. The Spanish ambassa- 
dor representing Isabella II was in high glee. I 
thought of poor Trevigne, whose fortune was waning 
with that of the prince for whom he had staked so 
much. I resolved to seek him in the spring, and see 
what could be done to save him from being crushed by 
the fall of the edifice he had attempted to build. I was 
sauntering gloomily among the brilliant assembly wliich 
had met on that evening, when I passed by Madame 
Ancelot, the wife of an academician, and herself an 
authoress of some distinction. She took my arm to 
promenade. We met several men of letters, among 
others, Balzac the novelist. He wore the costume of 
(70) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 71 

a monk, a fat and jolly monk of the good old time, 
and his natural proportions admirably suited the char- 
acter he had assumed. In the course of conversation, 
Madame Ancelot alluded to his supposed habits of 
extravagance. 

“ Ah ! ” he said, “ I see that you are like the rest of 
the world. How can I be extravagant ? Where are 
my means to repose on the gilded and luxurious couches 
of a Sardanapalus, or to give the feasts of a Belshaz- 
zar 

“ But,” replied the lady, “ you are the most success- 
ful novelist of the day, and your works are numerous.” 

True ; but they give me only a very poor and un- 
certain income. My works are bought in foreign coun- 
tries, in Bussia, in Belgium for instance, where they 
are surreptitiously printed for the market of the world, 
much more extensively than they sell in France. But 
this does not benefit me, as you well know, on account 
of there being no international copyright. He who 
wishes to read any one of my novels does not purchase 
it ; he sends for it to the circulating library. As a 
proof of the truth of what I say, I assure you that I 
am willing to part with the copyright of my existing 
books and of others which I shall engage to write if 
required, for a bare annuity of fifteen thousand francs. 
You see that, for an extravagant man, I am very 
modest.” 

We had hardly left him when we met de Tocque- 
ville. The lady complimented him on the immense 
success of his celebrated work: ‘‘Democracy in 
America.” 

“ Success ! Let us understand each other,” he said 
with a smile. “ If you mean success as to reputation, 
you are right. It has made me famous. But if you 


72 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


mean success as to the sale of the book, you are in er“ 
ror ; my publislier groans piteously.” 

“ Is it possible ! ” exclaimed the lady. 

“ It is but too true,” replied de Tocqueville with a 
slight philosophical shrug of the shoulders. Only fiv'e 
hundred copies were sold in the first year after its ap- 
pearance, and the sale, instead of increasing, diminishes. 
Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of As- 
calon, to check literary ambition. It is perhaps better 
to circulate those encouraging lies which gi^e to men 
of letters such alluring incomes derived from the pro- 
ductions of their brains.” He bowed to us and passed 
on. 

I turned to Madame Ancelot and said to her : “ I 
hope that your charming volumes, so fascinating in 
every page, have remunerated you more handsomely.” 

She opened her fan, and looking steadily at it as if 
she was seeking in its brilliant texture for a reply, she- 
said in a playful tone : I will answer you on another 
occasion. Look round. Is not this a fairy scene and 
an appropriate meeting ground for illusions of all sorts ? 
Is this the time and the place for the introduction of 
truth in the coarse apparel and with the unpainted 
cheeks of a buxom country girl? Ho. Let me only 
say to you for the present, that the republic of letters 
is like other republics in one respect. Although of longer 
duration than her sisters, for she is immortal, whilst 
they are from the earth and perishable, her rewards are 
not always for her most meritorious sons. T on have 
heard Balzac and de Tocqueville. Bear in mind, how- 
ever, that dramatic compositions ai*e what pay the 
best, when successful. Be like Scribe, the most fecund 
of all our dramatists, and you will be a man of wit and 
wealth — a happy but unfrequent combination.” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


73 


O Paris, city of mud and smoke, where virtue is 
but a name !” etc., etc. Faith ! It is Kousseau who 
speaks thus, not I. Oh ! no. I do not want to quarrel 
with the friends I have left within her imperial walls, 
particularly those daughters of Eve who told me that 
they worshiped the very mud of her streets, and wmuld 
prefer being chambermaids within her magic precincts 
than duchesses in provincial towns. Could Madam de 
Stael breathe any where else, and has she not informed 
posterity that she liked the sight of the gutter of the 
“ rvA du whb’e she resided, better than that of 

any other spot on earth out of the city which she idol- 
ized ? O Paris ! How many throw themselves into the 
vortex of thy dissipations, to be stunned iitto a sort of 
oblivious indifference to the past and the present, 
or to inhale thy atmosphere of voluptuousness, 
which, better than any chemist’s drugs, deadens 
pain and makes conscience insensible under the 
sharp tooth of remorse ? There is in thy fra- 
grant and sparkling cups of Circeaii festivities a subtle 
and delicious poison, with which a moral suicide may 
be but too easily perpetrated. The heart then becomes 
a sepulchre in which the soul lies cold and dead, until 
a voice calls for its resurrection. What voice ? Per- 
haps thou mayest answer that question for thyself, O 
reader ! . But let that pass. One thing I know, that in 
the stimulating hot -houses of that '‘great city, which 
claims to be the capital of the world, and in which 
the accumulated civilization of centuries strengthens, 
fertilizes, and heats the intellect into its highest artifi- 
cial development, a resolute will, feverishly excited by 
so many causes, and braced up by the magnetic in- 
fluence and congeniality of mind acting on mind, can 
triumph over the weakness of the diseiised body and 
4 


74 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS, 


conquer physical pain with more ease than elsewhere. 
One can rise from the couch where hours of agony had 
been endured, one can put on the elegant dress pre- 
pared by the most fashionable tailor, and, although de- 
bilitated by a long fast, turn night into day whilst toy- 
ing with the frivolous, or gathering wisdom and learn- 
ing from the sage. 

The clock had struck the midnight hour in the 
saloons of General Cass, our minister plenipotentiary 

at Paris, when Lady B , one of England’s fairest 

daughters, said to me : 

“ Had you nothing better to do than to talk for a 
whole half hour in the curtained embrasure of that 
yonder window, with that odious man who denies the 
immortality of the soul, and is an avowed inlidel and 
materialist. You keep bad company, and your friends 
will become uneasy.” 

I bowed in acknowledgment of the flattering inter- 
est taken in my behalf, and I replied that I had been 
discussing that very subject of materialism, and pro- 
testing against the threatened annihilation of my soul 
by my witty and erudite antagonist. The odious 
man ” she spoke of was a physician who enjoyed a 
world-wide reputation, and with whom I had the good 
luck of having become intimate. 

But,” said I to Lady B , do not be so indignant 

with the doctor. He may not be a materialist after 
all, as he pretends.” 

“ How so ?” she said with an expression of surprise 
in her countenance. 

‘‘ It is an inference of mine,” I replied, “ which is 
founded on what I am going to relate. You may have 
heard that an immense crowd Alls, every day, the sa- 
loons of the great physician, from noon to six o’clock 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


75 


in the evening. The patients are admitted in turn to 
his presence. He is unapproachable during those 
hours, except to suffering humanity. As a proof of 
his regard, he had kindly exempted me from the rule. 
One day, when I had something of importance to com- 
municate, I called at the time I knew him to he so 
much engaged. 

‘ Pierre,’ I said to the servant who was in atten- 
dance, ‘ carry my card to your master. I must speak 
to him without delay, and without being seen by the 
crowd of invalids who rnight complain of preference 
granted to me, if I were admitted before those who 
have preceded me here.’ 

He returned after a few minutes, and said : ^ I will 
conduct you, according to the doctor’s instructions, to 
his bed-chamber, which is accessible through a secret 
passage. There you will please to wait until I am per- 
mitted to take you to his office.’ 

The doctor, you know, has the misfortune of be- 
ing a bachelor like myself. What was my astonish- 
ment when I entered his bedroom ! From the ceilings 
to the floor, the walls were covered with none but mag- 
niflcent oil paintings representing sacred subjects. At 
the head of the bed was a jprie-dieu, on which there 
was a superbly illustrated copy of the Gospels, which 
was lying open. There was a red velvet cushion to 
kneel on at the foot of the prie-dieu, which was sur- 
niounted by a beautifully carved ivory Christ on a 
gilded cross. After a little while, I was led to the 
presence of the medical philosopher who seemed to de- 
light in being a cynical unbeliever. Guessing at what 
had passed in my mind, he said with a laugh, not un- 
mixed, I thought, with some embarrassment of man- 
ner : ‘ You are surprised, are you not V 


76 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


^ Certainly,’ I replied. ‘ Who would not ? Faith ! 
My first impression was that I had been introduced by 
mistake into the bed-chamber of the archbishop of 
Paris.’ 

“^Well, well, my friend,’ he said in a half jocose 
and half serious tone, ‘ I hear and see so many unclean 
things during the day, that, on my retiring at night, I 
like, before going to sleep, to refresh my eyes when 
looking round my room.’ 

“ Several times since, I have tried to refer to this 
singular circumstance, in the hope of obtaining further 
light on it, but he has always glided from the subject, 
and I had to desist, because I saw that it was his de- 
sire to have it forgotten.” 

Who would have suspected it ?” exclaimed Lady 
B . 

It shows, madam, that there is some truth in the 
old saying : ‘ Trust not to appearances,’’ ” 

Ha ! ha ! ha ! Thus laughed tlie old Countess of 

Y , when I called on her, one evening, to enjoy 

her bewitching conversation, so rich in anecdotes of the, 
court of the Emperor Hapoleon I. She had been one 
of the ladies of honor of Josephine, and of course was 
full of gossip on all the celebrated characters of that 
epoch. Ha ! ha ! ha ! So, you have been paying 
a visit to the necromancer, Mile. Lenormant ? Don’t 
deny it ; don’t blush ; I saw you enter, as my carriage 
drove through the rue Tournon,^ where she resides.” 

“ Why should I deny it ?” I replied. Is she not a 
celebrity % Did she not have the honor of being per- 
mitted to appear before the Congress of Sovereigns 
who met at Aix la Chapelle in 1815, to show them how 
a pack of cards may be pregnant with the fate of na- 
tionalities and individuals? Why then should I not 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 77 

admit tliat I liad the curiosity to put her art to the 
test ?” 

I have in my turn the curiosity,” said the countess, 
“ to know what she has predicted to you, if it can be 
communicated.” 

‘‘ Willingly. Let me say first, that my patience was 
sorely tried, for I had to dance attendance during sev- 
eral hours, so crowded her large parlor was with women 
who had preceded me, and some of whom appeared to 
be educated and refined. I was the only man there, 
which circumstance, I confess, disconcerted me not a 
little. But I put on a bold face, and entering into 
conversation with some of the ladies, I turned into 
ridicule my own apparent credulity. They told me, 
however, that I was wrong in thus treating the subject 
so slightingly. They assured me that their own expe- 
rience had taught them, year after year, that Made- 
moiselle Lenormant knew the past and the future, as 
well as the present, a fact which I was not disposed to 
dispute, since I was soon to ascertain for myself what 
I was to think of it. At last, my turn came to consult 
the sibyl. I presented myself at the entrance of the 
closet vdiere she had been giving audience. The door 
stood open, but a heavy tapestry curTain hung from the 
lintel to the fioor. There I found a portly old woman, 
wdio, with one hand, had lifted up the curtain, and 
who, with the other, beckoned me in. She riveted her 
eyes on me for a minute or so, and I felt as if a pair 
of gimlets were boring into me. Wonderful indeed 
were those small round eyes whose keen, steady and 
sharp stiletto-pointed look seemed to penetrate to the 
inmost depths of my soul. JS’othing else was remarka- 
ble. in her, nor was there anything visibly diabolic in 
the room where she held intercourse with her fortune- 


78 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


telling cards, or with spirits from another world. She 
was fat and coarse, putting me in mind of those female 
janitors who are so common in Paris. She made me 
sit by her at a table on which her cards were spread. 
Whilst she was pretending to arrange them in the 
required sibylline order, I observed that she stole fre- 
quent glances at me in a large mirror which was ap- 
pended to the wall in front of us. Whether it was in 
my features, or in her cards, or in the polished surface 
of the mirror that she read, I do not know, but certain 
it is, that she appeared to have known me from the 
cradle and to have never lost sight of me. She un- 
folded my intellectual and moral organization with as 
much precision as if she had dandled me on her knees, 
and as if I had grown up within the shadow of her 
petticoat. She told me strange things of the past, 
strange things of the future, things which have hap- 
pened, and things which have not yet happened. At 
last, dropping her greasy cards, and looking at me she 
said : ^ Have you any questions to put V • 

‘‘ ‘ Since you invite me to do so, I will ask one ques- 
tion, only one,’ I replied. ‘ How many friends have I 
got V 

“ She again consulted her pasteboard revealers of 
destinies, and said gravely : ‘ You have but one friend, 
and he is now in great danger. He is threatened this 
year with a bloody grave. Should he parry the im- 
pending blow, his life will be long and prosperous.’ 

“ I thought of Trcvigne, and felt a sort of supersti- 
tious alarm creeping over me. ‘ Is that all ?’ she said. 

‘‘ ‘ Yes.’ But correcting myself, I added : ‘ I will 
only put another question. Shall I ever recover my 
health V 

“ To my astonishment, she threw down her cards, and 


FEI^NANDO DE LEMOS, 


79 


thus addressed me : ^ Of course, I am not a sorceress, 
mj dear sir, but I am somewliat of a physician. Tell 
me the symptoms of your infirmity.’ 

‘‘ ‘ Of course, I am not a sorceress.’ Here was an 
opportunity offered me to interrogate her on her art, 
and to relieve certain perplexities which she had pro- 
duced in my mind. But pride, that stiff-necked pride 
which has been a stumbling block to me on so many 
occasions, stood in my way, and I shrank from appear- 
ing to attach snfiicient importance to her profession to 
question her about it. Otherwise, who knows ? She 
might have revealed to me the means by which she 
had persuaded so many people that she possessed the 
art of divination. I have since regretted my reserve 
on that occasion, and shall probably continue to regret 
it. Should I ever be mined by a revolution, as she 
has foretold me, the art which she has so successfully 
practiced, if I had been initiated in it by her, would 
be something to fall back upon, and I might make a 
comfortable iiving by becoming a fortune-teller.” I 
smiled when uttering this last phrase, but there was no 
corresponding smile on the face of the old countess. 
She looked pensive and grave. 

My young friend,” she said, “ there are many 
mysterious things in this world, to which we must not 
allude, under tlie terrible penalty of being held up to 
ridicule. !May God, however, avert from you the ca- 
lamity with which you have been threatened by the 
sibyl !” 

“ But is it true,” said I to the countess, that she had 
really predicted to. Josephine the fall of Hapoleon, when 
he was at the zenith of his power, and that she was in- 
carcerated for it ?” 

It is true,” she answered. Josephine had prom- 


80 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


ised tlie LeDormant not to mention it to the emperor , 
hilt she was so thoroughly alarmed, that it was easy for 
her lord to discover that she had something unpleasant 
on her mind, which she attempted to conceal from him, 
and he terrihed her into a confession.” 

‘‘It must have been no difficult task,” I observed, 
“ to frighten a being so gentle and loving as to have no 
will of her own when opposed to his.” 

“ As to that,” she said, laughing, “ you are romanc- 
ing as some historians and memoir writers have done. 
Josephine, good and kind as she was, had her faults Kke 
us common mortals, and she was not always so gentle 
as not to have a will of her own in opposition to that of 
her Olympian spouse. Will you have an instance of 
it?” 

“ Wy weight in gold for it !” I exclaimed. 

“ You shall have it for less,” she continued. “ The 
German campaign had begun. The French armies were 
beyond the Fhine, and JNapoleon was to leave Paris 
for Strasbourg on his way to Vienna and other capitals. 
It was known that Josephine had begged to follour him, 
and had insisted on it with no small persistency. ‘ He 
might be w^ounded ; she must be near him. Otherwise, 
the anxieties that would assail her, when she could not 
forget that he was in the midst of so many dangers, 
would be too agonizing to be endured. Her health 
would fail ; she would die, and see him no more.’ She. 
had renewed her request again and again with all the 
blandishments of conjugal tenderness, and with that ir- 
resistible grace which she was. known to possess. It had 
all been in vain. Hapoleon had sternly resisted her en- 
treaties. It was not long before the time lixed for his 
departure arrived. It was to be at midnight on a par- 
ticular day. Superfluous it is to say, that all was ready 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 81 

at tlie appointed lioiir. The coaches were drawn up 
before the palace, the cavalry escort at its post, and tlie 
torches lighted. The rigid punctuality of the imperial 
master was well known. What Avas the general aston- 
ishment, wdien, at a quarter past twelve, hlapoleon had 
not appeared ! Half past twelve ! One o’clock, and no 
emperor! The excitement became intense. What had 
happened ? What could have happened ? He was 
known to be in the apartment of Josephine, and the 
doors of the august bed-chamber still remained closed. 
The numerous suite of attendants lost themselves in the 
wildest conjectures, and some of them have told me that 
they became so nervously excited as to feel ready to 
yell. At last, when the clock struck two, the door of 
the room of the empress Avas opened and flung back 
Avith violence. The heavy, clumsy and irregular steps 
Avhich were heard approaching, could not be mistaken, 
and the emperor, with his thick campaign boots on and 
with his famous gray coat and cocked hat, was seen hasti- 
ly coming down the broad marble flight of stairs of the 
Tuileries. The drums beat, the trumpets sounded, the 
torches flung around a more vivid light, the men of the 
escort stood erect in their saddles, tightening the reins, 
and with spurs ready to strike, the horses tossed their 
manes as if they understood the time for action had 
come, the officer who stood at the door of the carriage 
opened it wide, uncovered and bowed down to the 
ground as the emperor almost rushed inside and took his 
seat. Just at that moment, something as light as a cloud 
drifting before the wind, and as white as new-fallen suoav, 
floated doAvn the stairs through the line of guards, and 
glided into the emperor’s carriage, where it placed itself 
by his side. It w^as the empress in her night dress. 
The thunderer looked at his mate, as it were with speech- 
4 - 


82 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


less wonder, but only for a second did be thus look be- 
fore he ‘shouted: Postillions, full gallop.”'^ Onward 
started the imperial train like a whirlwind. 

I was at that time at Strasbourg, of which mj hus- 
band was in command. 'No words can express my sur- 
prise, when one morning an orderly officer called on 
me and said ; ^ The empress is in Strasbourg, and has 
ordered me to invite you to bring to her without delay 
all your wardrobe. She has aiTived from Paris in her 
night clothes with the emperor, and wishes to choose 
among your wardrobe the most appropriate dress to 
suit herself.’ 

“ ‘ You are stark mad,’ 1 said to the officer. 

‘ No, madam,’ he replied, ‘ I am perfectly sane, as 
you may convince yourself by repairing to the presence 
of the empress, as she desires.’ 

‘‘ When I appeared before her with several servants 
bearing the most select of my dresses, she received me 
with peals of laughter, and seemed to relish wdth as 
much glee as a spoiled child the prank she had played. 
We continued to laugh heartily, as she tried, one after 
the other, every piece of apparel which I had brought. 
She was full of hope that, having contrived to come 
thus far, she would be permitted to go farther, but in 
that she was disappointed. Thus you see that, gentle 
and submissive as she is represented to have been, the 
graceful creole of Martinique had sometimes a will of 
her own. Hence I will echo, with an addition, the old 
saying so often quoted : trust not to aj^earances, and to 
reputations made by historians, memoir writers and au- 
thors of romances.” 


* Ventre terre. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE MARQUIS AND HIS BROTHERS. — A STRIKING EFFECT OF 
THE RIGHT OF PRIMOGENITURE. 

At last tlie time came wbich I had fixed for mj de- 
parture, to meet Trevigne in Spain. I stopped in Or- 
leans one day, to see its curiosities. Among other things, 
I had determined to visit the house of Agnes Sorel, the 
celebrated favorite of Charles VII. On one occasion 
she appeared in traveling costume before her royal lov- 
er, who had almost lost the whole of France, and who 
lived in inglorious sloth in the petty city of Bourges. 

“Whither are you going, gentle Agnes,” said the as- 
tonished king. 

“ It was predicted to me long ago,” she replied, “ that 
I was destined to be the mie jpar amour of the king of 
France. You are dethroned, and Bedford reigns in 
Paris. To him therefore I go.” 

The youthful monarch blushed, and, stung to the 
quick, sprang to arms. The result was, that the Eng- 
lish were expelled from France, and Joan of Arc led 
him to be crowned in Bheims. Blessed be the patriot- 
ism of women, from Judith to the maid of Saragossa! 
There is none nobler and more unselfish. Such being 
my feeling on this subject, it was in keepiug with it 
that I should have been in search of the historic dwell- 
ing of that damsel, who, if she loved sinfully, had a 
soul to hate the oppressors of her country. My guide- 

( 83 ) 


84 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


book had informed me, that tlie house of which I was 
in quest was in a secluded street, not far from Royal 
street, the main thoroughfare of the city of Orleans.' 
Down that beautiful street, therefore, I strolled, looking 
right and left for some genial face I could venture to 
address, for J am very sensitive, and easily put out of 
joint by a churlish answer. Fortunately, I spied an 
honest burgher wdth a face as placid as the moon, who 
stood on the threshold of his store, gazing vacantly and 
listlessly at loiterers like myself. I approached him hat 
in hand, and asked him if he would do me the kindness 
to point out where was the house of Agnes Sorel. The 
suddenness of the question and its unexpectedness 
seemed to^make him lose his equilibrium, but, soon re- 
coveriiig the habitual composure out of which he had 
been startled, he answered, with a countenance beam- 
ing with satisfaction at the opportunity of obliging a 
stranger : 

‘‘ Certainly, sir, with the utmost pleasure. You have 
only to turn round and to look at the opposite side of 
the street. There, as you see, is the house of Agnes & 
Co., but I was not aware that Sorel ' was one of the 
firm.” 

Turning round as I was told, I saw in glittering gold 
letters over the top of the front door of a dry-goods store : 
Agnes cb Go. Convulsed with laughter, I fairly ran 
away, leaving the astonished citizen staring at me, and 
greatly in doubt, I presume, whether there was not a 
screw loose in my brain. This unromantic incident 
made me give up Agnes Sorel altogether, and go back 
to the dinner which was waiting for me at the Hotel de 
France. 

After dinner, I was examining and criticising the 
/^asteless statue of Joan of Arc erected on a public 


FERNANDO DE LEA/OS. 


85 


square, when I was accosted hy a very fat woman, who 
looked like a monstrous cheese gifted with the power of 
locomotion, and down whose forehead and cheeks per- 
spiration trickled most profusely. 

lfo7i gentilhomme^^^ she said, wiping her face, 
‘‘will you believe that I have been quizzed the w^hole 
day by the inhospitable j)eople of this city ? I am from 
ISTantz, and, having at last by dint of hard labor scraped 
up sufficient means to visit Paris, that wonder of the 
world, I have stopped here, on my way to the capital, 
merely to see the statue of the glorious maid of Orleans, 
who drove out of it the perfidious English. As soon 
as I had breakfasted, I asked the landlord for the statue 
of the maid of Orleans, and he sent me here, where I saw 
this statue with the name of Joan of Arc inscribed on its 
pedestal. I have for hours been inquiring for the maid 
of Orleans, and every body has sent me back to the same 
spot, until I am tired to death, and when, at last diiven 
out of all patience, I showed some temper, and asked 
what on earth this Joan of Arc had to do wdth the 
maid of Orleans, they laughed in my face ; and pray, 
sir, why do you laugh also 

I explained to her how Joan of Arc and the maid of 
Orleans were but one and the same person. She seemed 
much relieved and very grateful for the information, 
and thanked me warmly. “ Yoyez vous, monsieur^' 
she said, “ ce n'est que la Frame quiproduit depareilles 
femmes Y * I thought of many other heroines, but I 
said nothing, and I left the fat woman in ecstatic con- 
templation of the object of her admiration. 

I tarried at Tours to visit its cathedral and the beau 
tiful environs of that city. I deviated to my left from 
the straight road to Bordeaux, and went to Loches, 

* Do you see, sir, it is only France that can produce such women. 


86 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


where is the famous castle in which Louis XI im- 
mured some of his prisoners of state. There, are still 
exhibited the iron ring in the wall, apoci\yphal or not, 
to whfch the cage tliat held captive Cardinal La Baliie, 
was said to be suspended, and the engines of war which, 
by the faint light filtering through a small aperture into 
the dungeon, an unfortunate duke of Milan drew onJ 
the walls, to while away the long dreary hours of his 
solitary confinement. I came out of these subterranean 
chambers with a breast panting for the free air of 
heaven. Loches is full of the memories of Agnes So- 
rel. I contemplated with interest the recumbent statue 
on the tomb erected to her. At her head kneel two 
angels, who seem to pray for mercy. How softly and 
profoundly sleeps the marble shaped into that beautiful 
human form ! How exquisitely chaste were the features 
of the dead in their eternal repose, if chaste was not 
the heart of the living ! “ Alas !” says an old chronicle, 

“ she sinned grievously, but she was gentle and forgiving, 
and not undeserving of forgiveness herself, for she was 
liberal to the poor, and gave much to churches and mon- 
asteries. May her soul have been thereby redeemed !” 

I had a letter of introduction for the Marquis of 

B , wLich I delivered. He resided in a little jewel 

of a castle which had been a hunting seat for Charles 
YH and Agnes Sorel in the magnificent forest of Loches, 
which is no longer in existence. In later times, the 
stone bust of Francis the First had been put in a niche 
above the main entrance. I was received with much 
cordiality, and was made at once to feel as much at 
ease as if I had been intimate for years with the family. 

I passed three days under that hospitable roof. The 
marquis was very rich and lived with much splendor. 
His mother w’as on a visit to him. I was struck with 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


87 


the veneration with which she was treated. She was 
attended by her chaplain in clerical habit. She 
asked me if I liked music. ‘‘Passionately,” I re- 
plied. She proposed to play for me ; I bowed pro- 
foundly and led her to the piano. She beckoned to the 
chaplain, a young man, who, immediately obeying her 
summons, stood up back of her chair, and sang a piece' 
from the gone-on t-of-fashion opera of “Joseph sold by 
his brothers,” whilst she accompanied him on the in- 
strument. I enjoyed the whole scene richly. The ma- 
jestic old lady, Avhen she walked, seemed to tread on 
a platform made up of thrones. When she rose to pass 
into another apartment, a lacquey, who was always at 
hand, opened the folding doors. and closed them after 
she had passed. Although her husband had been dead 
ten years, she still wore deep mourning, and her dress 
was of antique pattern. She courtesied after the fashion 
in use in the age of Louis XI Y, and, although perfect- 
ly courteous and even kindly affable, it was evident 
th^t a minute never flung its shadow across the dial 
during which she was forgetful of her rank and blood. 
The architecture of the building, its interior decora- 
tions, the manners, feelings, thoughts and language of 
its inmates took me back to at least the age of Henry 
lY, the white-plumed hero of ISTavarre. The illusion 
was complete. The pyramids of Egypt could not have 
interested me more than these people, who, although 
wearing a modern dress, save the dowager marquise, 
had remained what their ancestors vrere three hundred 
years ago. What stone-cemented monument of the 
past can be more attractive than living antiquated rel- 
ics of flesh and blood ! 

The every-day dinner of the marquis was superbly 
served, and showed that guests might be expected — : 


88 


FERNANDO DE LEMCS. 


wliicli expectation was realized; for traveling equip- 
ages never failed to stop at the dinner hour, whilst I 

was there. Once it was the Prince of P . He was 

returning from Pan. ‘‘ How remarkable,” he said, in 
the course of conversation, is the type of distinction 
which characterizes the Beaimese population ! The 
postillion who drove me when I left Pan, was so like 
Henry lY, that I was tempted to throw myself out of 
ray carriage and say to him, ^ Sire, take my seat, and 
let me take yours.’ ” 

The young marquise was one of the most beautiful 
women of France. I was seated by her side at the ta- 
ble. She said to me with her peculiarly melodious and 
gentle laugh : 

“ Ha ! ha ! I have caught your eye resting on this 
breast-pin of mine. You think, no doubt, that it is not 
in harmony with the richness of my costume, and you 
are right ; for it is not intrinsically worth two cents. 
But it is, nevertheless, the most precious of all my jew- 
els. During the emigratiop, my poor father was com- 
pelled to make a living by manufacturing pins, and 
peddling them in the streets of the cities of Germany. 
At the restoration of the Bourbons, wdien he came back 
to France, he presented me with this coarse pin which 
he had made with his owm hands, and which I always 
wear.” 

I bowed in silent acknowdedgment and appreciation 
of her feelings, but thus addressed her mentally : Sure- 
ly, if your ancestors had not been among those who dis- 
tinguished themselves in Palestine during the first 
crusade, you Avould not have ventured on the avowal 
that your father had been reduced so low as to be a 
pedlar. Upstarts do not make such confessions.” Her 
husband was a Bayard, a true knight without fear and 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


89 


M'itliout reproach. It was indeed an immaculate fam- 
ily, as pure as crystal, and profoundly venerated in the 
whole province. So rigid were they in their morals, 
that any misconduct which affected the character of 
any one of their servants, was looked upon by them as 
a serious household calamity. 

One day, as I walked on the terrace of the castle 
witji the intendant, or business man of the family, I ex- 
pressed my surprise and my gratification at having met 
vdth such curious fossils’, such well-preserved remnants 
of the heroic ages. 

“ Oh !” he exclaimed, “ if you knew them as well as I 
do, your surprise would have no bounds. Let me relate 
to you an anecdote, in illustration of what I mean. 
The old marquis, when he died, left three sons. For- 
tunately they were all of age, and you will soon under- 
stand why I mention it as a fortunate circumstance. 
A few days after that nobleman’s death, the dowager 
marquise summoned her sons to her presence in her 
priv^ate apartment, and addressed them as follows : 

‘ My sons, I have desired your attendance here in 
order to settle definitively your lamented father’s inher- 
itance. I will now proceed to give to each of you his 
respective share. Oar homme d/ affaires, here present, 
(pointing to me) has clearly explained to my satisfac- 
tion that your father’s estate ought to be divided, ac- 
cording to existing laws, into three equal parts, after 
having deducted the amount of whatever just claims 1 
may have on it. I have no doubt that such is the law 
as he says, for. I have much confidence in him. Poor 
France! They have made of late so many laws for 
her, that it is not extraordinary if they have manufac- 
tured such a one among the rest, with which, after all, 
it is quite in keeping. But such a law cannot exist for 


90 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS, 


our family, although it may exist for France. We have 
flourished for centuries under another regime, and for 
us that regime can never cease to be. Therefore let 
all things stand for us now, as it stood before for our 
ancestors. Hence, monsieur le marquis^ being the 
eldest, this is your share, as in the good old time (giv- 
ing him almost the whole of the inheritance), and you, 
the younger sons, here is what comes to you (allowing 
them a mere pittance), and now our homme d) affaires 
has explained to me that, in order that this should be 
valid and permanent, it is necessary that there be on 
your part, messieurs les cadets^^ certain . . . what does 
he call it ? .... ho ! .... I have it ... . renuncia- 
tions, I believe. Is it not so ? (turning to me, who nod- 
ded assent). Kenunciations then be it. My memory, it 
seems, has not failed me. Well, everything is ready, 
my sons, as I am informed, according to my directions, 
at the notary’s ofiice. You will have merely to order 
the deeds to be read to you and to sign them. Go, with 
my blessings on you, and let this be speedily settled !’ 

Those three men rose without saying one w^ord, fol- 
lowed me to the ofiice of the notary, who read to the 
younger sons the acts, by which they gave up their 
equal shares in a princely inheritance. I kept my eye 
on them, sir, and 1 assm-e you that there was not a mo- 
ment’s hesitation. Calm, resolved, true to a cherished 
principle, obedient to parental dictation, the two broth- 
ers flung away a million each, as if it had been the 
wetched stump of an extinguished cigar. The third 
one accepted their shares with as much indifference 
and as a matter of course, without expressing regrets or 
thanks. Mafo% dest Men heau^ monsieur 

True, it is Men heau^' I replied. ‘‘ But what has be- 

* Cadet means a younger son. ' t Faith ! This is very fine, sir. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


91 


come of the two joimger brothers, those woDderful 
prodigies of self-abiiegatioo ? I take in them the deep- 
est interest.” 

What has become of them said the homme W af- 
faires^ echoing my question ; Look to the right .... 
way off .... on the verge of the horizon. Do you 
see yonder chateau 

Yes ; it looks like something of importance.” 

“ It is something of importance, and it belongs to one 
of them.” 

“ Indeed !” 

“ Now look to your left. Do you discover in that 
valley, and almost hidden by an intervening forest, but 
still looming up above it, that grand-looking structure ?” 

“ I see something towering up like some proud feu- 
dal manor.” 

“ Good. That belongs to the other brother.” 

‘‘ Ho ! ho ! I am glad to know that they are both 
so well otf,” I remarked. 

‘‘ Well off!” repeated the homme affaires^ with a 
slight intonation of indignant surprise at the words 
used. ‘‘ They are very rich, sir, perhaps richer than 
their eldest brother.” 

How did that happen ? They must have been pro- 
digiously clever, if they could in ten years, for you told 
me, I believe, that their father died ten years ago, make 
such large fortunes ! What business did they under- 
take which turned out so extraordinarily remunerative ?” 

“ Business 1 business ! Why, sir, there are things 
in this country which your American mind will hardly 
comprehend. We have here, notwithstanding nos rev- 
olutions egalitairesf a number of very wealthy manu- 
facturers, merchants, grocers, or other such people, who, 
* Our leveling revolutions. 


92 


FEI^NANDO DE LEMOS. 


having made millions in trade, or God knows how, and 
having but one daughter or two, desire for them, very 
naturally, what they do not possess ; or, to speak more 
properly, the girls themselves save their parents the 
trouble of desiring anything on the subject, for they do 
and overdo themselves the desiring part. What a de- 
lightful thing it would be, thinks Miss so and so, to be- 
long to the family of that grand Marqais of B -, and 

to sport such old armorials' on one’s carriage! The 
most exclusive door in Europe would be opened to me, 
and my dearest friends, Eugenie and Clara, would die 
of spite. Thus speculates day and night the busy brain 
of a beautiful girl, fresh from the convent, and just in- 
troduced to all the vanities of the world. Thus it hap- 
pened that papa came one day, hat in hand, to the 
homme W affaires of the grand marquis, and threw out 
some hints as to the possibility of arranging an alhance 
between his millions and the coronet of one of the pen- 
niless brothers. Another wealthy man imitates this ex- 
ample. Their daughters are beautiful, well educated, 
relined in manners and as noble-minded as any prin- 
cess. Why should they not be countesses ? Now your 
question is answered as to the sudden acquisition of 
wealth by the two brothers of the marquis.” 

He paused, and, taking out of his gold snuff-box a 
pinch with which he deliberately regaled his nostrils, 
whilst seemingly meditating on what he had related, 
he said : “ Disregarding the sublimity of the moral side 
of the renunciation made by the younger sons, and their 
willing sacrilice of pecuniary interest on the altar of 
primogeniture as it had existed for their race during 
centuries, it strikes me, sir, that, in a purely business 
point of view, it was a good operation, considering the 
circumstances under which it was made. Should the 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS, 


93 


estate have been equally divided into three parts, the 
importance of the family would have been diminished, 
the prestige of its antique splendor done away, the 
fame resulting from the magnanimous immolation of 
self-interest to principle, not acquired, and the two mar- 
riages of which I have spoken, not effected. Three no- 
blemen, bearing an historical name, would have sunk 
lower as to social position, and two plebeian girls would 
not have risen to a higher sphere. But as it is, there 
has been a reciprocal improvement of the aristocratic 
and democratic elements by their blending together, in- 
stead of that deterioration which is produced by jeal- 
ousies and the conflict of adverse interests and prejudices. 
Besides, had things taken a different course, I should 
not have been greatly beneflted, myself, as I am now, 
by having become the administrator of three princely 
estates. What think you of it 

“ I think,” said I, smiling at the question, that your 
point of view is a shrewd one, and that there is in you 
a happy compour d of the philosopher and of the man 
of business.” 


CHAPTER X. 


FERNANDO’S ADVENTURES IN THE PYRENEES. 

My next visit was to Chinon, a decidedly ugly pro- 
vincial town. I stopped at tlie Hotel of the Green 
Oak, where I ate a very foul dinner served in very 
filthy dishes, and drank bad water and bad wine in the 
least dingy of the glasses which I could pick among 
those ofiered to me. I sallied, after my uncomfortable 
dinner, to look out for the house of Rabelais, who was 
born at Chinon. Rabelais was a priest and cure of 
Meudon, near Paris, in 1545. It was then that he 
published his Pantagruel, which made him famous. He 
died in 1553 in his seventieth year. He was versed in 
the use of eight languages — French, Italian, Spanish, 
German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and the Arabic. He 
was a theologian, a grammarian, a poet, a philosopher, 
a physician, a jurisconsult, and an astronomer. It was 
not without misgivings, I confess, that I began my 
search, for I remembered what had befallen me in 
Orleans, when inquiring for the house of Agnes Sorel. 
I went to the public square at six o’clock in the after 
noon. Every body was there. I took notice of a very 
tall, very large and very rotund individual who was 
promenading in solitary grandeur, with the breast flaps 
of his coat thrown back, to show probably the immacu- 
late purity of his snow-white vest, and with the swallow 
(94) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


95 


tail of that coat oscillating transversallj behind him, 
as he walked pompously with elephantine steps. Surely, 
said I to myself, this grand personage must at least be 
the mayor of the town, and to him I may venture to 
apply with a better chance of information than to any 
other quarter. I approached him respectfully, address- 
ing him in these words : 

‘‘ I am a stranger, sir, in this place. Will you please 
to tell me where I can find the house of Rabelais?” 

“Rabelais ! Rabelais!” he repeated musingly. “ Do 
you say Rabelais ? Well, I declare, that is strange. I 
never heard of that individual before, and yet I know 
every man, woman and child in Chinon. You must be 
mistaken, sir. I assure you that there has never been 
any one here of that name, at least since I was born.” 

“ It was, in truth,” said I, “ long before you were 
born, for he resided in this place several centuries ago.” 

“ And pray, sir,” he said, looking askance at me as 
if he suspected me of the intention of quizzing him, 
“ what makes you suppose that I can possibly know the 
dwelling of a man who died before the deluge ?” This 
was rather tartly said. 

“ Because,” I replied, “ I supposed that Rabelais, 
Pantagruel and Gargantua were as well known in 
Chinon, as Ceiwantes, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza 
ill La Mancha in Spain.” 

“ A great error, a very great error of yours, sir. 
These people are totally unknown here. I assure you 
of it, on my honor.” 

He bowed me off majestically after this emphatic 
declaration, resuming his walk with more solemnity 
than before, and with a more accelerated oscillation 
of his coat tail. This reminded me of what a stage 
driver, near whose exalted seat on the top of his vehicle 


9G 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


I had placed myself, the better to see the country I was 
traveling through, had said to me when we passed in 
front of a beautiful little chateau encircled by a rapid 
and lovely stream which, as it ran onward, hugged the 
walls of the turreted building, making it look as if it 
rose from tlie very bed of the river. I inquired who 
was the owmer of it. The coach driver answered, with 
a contemptuous toss of the head : 

It belongs to the baroness Dudevant, she who calls 
herself George Sand and dresses like a man. They say 
that she is somebody in Paris, but id ce n^est pas grand 
chosei’^^ So much for fame and the glory of this world ! 

I passed through La Yendee, which acquired such 
historical renown in the famous civil war that followed 
the fall of Louis XYI. Hear Xiort, the public coach, 
or diligance^ as it is called in France, stopped at a small 
village to change horses. We were two in the coupe^ 
which, as is well known to travelers on the continent 
of Europe, contains only three seats. The French dili- 
gence is divided into three separate compartments of 
which the coupe is- one, and fronts the horses. It is 
the most sought after. Its middle seat is the least 
(comfortable; an old gentleman presented himself to 
occupy it. I heard the postillion address him with 
much respect as Count of St. Hermino. That name 
recalled to my memory the following passage in one of 
the dispatches of the Marquis of Yaudreuil, Governor 
of Louisiana, who, on the 15th of May, 1751, thus wrote 
to one of the French ministers at home : 

The situation of the Lady of St. Hermine, who 
(3am e to this colony thirty years since, by virtue of a 
lettre de cachet^\ obliges me to represent to you that 

* But here she is not much of anything. 

+ An arbitrary order of arrest issued by the government. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


97 


this lady is at present unable to sujDport herself here 
any longer, on account of the extreme destitution to 
which she is reduced by the death of Mr. de Loubois, 
with whom she had always lived. I beg permission to 
send her back gratis to France in one of the king’s 
ships. Moreover, the lettre de cachet has expired, and 
the lady is very old.” 

After refusing at first the corner seat, which, being a 
young man, I though it incumbent on me to offer him, 
the count, yielding to my pressing invitation, at last 
accepted it with many thanks, and I thus found myself 
placed between my two traveling companions. They 
both were of about the same age, and both wore the 
decoration of the legion of honor. The diligence 
rolled on heavily, and for awhile we remained per- 
fectly silent. I observed that the two gentlemen occa- 
sionally stole glances at each other, which seemed to 
revive recollections of the past. One said to the other : 

If I am not greatly mistaken, we have met before, 
although it is many years ago.” 

I was making the same reflection,” was the reply. 

An explanation followed, and it resulted, that they 
had been companions in arms in the days of the 
republic, the consulate, and the empire. The conver- 
sation became very animated, and very interesting to 
me. They fought their battles over again, recalled 
many incidents of their campaign life, and gradually 
approached the questions of the day. It was soon ap- 
parent that one was a legitimist, and the other a Louis 
Philippist. They agreed on nothing in their politics^ 
but still they expressed their conflicting opinions with 
mutual forbearance and courtesy. At last. General 
Defrance, for such was the name and rank of the other 
gentleman, said to the Count of St. Hermine : 

5 


98 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


After all, my dear sir, time and experience soften 
opposition, and even aversion. At the end of a lon^ 
life one is apt to take a very different, or at least a very 
modified view from the one entertained in the begin- 
ning of it. We find, when the frost of age matures 
and mellows onr judgment, that there are very few 
things worth quarreling about, and hardly any evils un- 
mixed with good. I confess for my part, that more 
than one change in my former feelings has come over 
me. For instance, born in the lowest ranks of the peo- 
ple, I had imbibed aU their prejudices against the 
clergy and against the order to which you belong, 
count. Well, sir, the worthy chaplain of my regiment 
under the empire, by his many virtues and admirable 
traits of heroism, and the sanctity of his life, reconciled 
me with the cassock, and, after that, at the battle of 
Wagram, I relinquished my long entertained hostihty 
against the nohlesseP 

The count remained silent, but I remarked that he 
had assumed a more erect position, that his eye 
flashed, and that an expression had stolen over his 
face which seemed to say : Ha ! ha ! is justice ren- 
dered at last ? 

“ You remember the Duke of Montmorency, my 
dear count,” resumed General Defrance. ‘‘You will 
admit that he was not above mediocrity. At the time 
the battle of Wagram was fought, he was on the 
staflf of Marshal Davoust. He had been very ill for 
several weeks and altogether incapable of duty. On 
the day on which the battle was foreseen to take place, 
at dawn guns began to be heard, and the marshal, 
mounting his horse, galloped to a hill, from which he 
examined with his glass the position of the enemy and 
the movements which were going on. We of the staflf 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


... 99 


were also absorbed in the contemplation of what was 
before us. The marshal, having finished his observa- 
tions and turning round, saw with astonishment the 
Duke of Montmorency on horseback within a few steps 
of him. We all wondered how he had got there at all. 
He looked like a ghost, or as if he was soon going to 
be one. 

“ ‘ What on earth are you doing here, Mr. de Mont- 
morency?’ exclaimed the marshal. 

“ ‘ My duty,’ was the simple reply. ‘ I heard the 
firing of cannon. I asked my servant what it meant. 
He told me it was the beginning of a battle. I ordered 
him to put me on my horse, and here I am.’ 

‘ I commend your spirit, sir,’ said the marshal, ^ but 
you have acted very imprudently. You have endang- 
ered your life by coming out of your bed to join me, to 
whom you can be of no service in the condition in 
which you are. I thank you, but beg you to retire.’ 

“ Mr. de Montmorency refused, pleading that he was 
bound to be at his post on such an occasion, and that he 
could not fail to do so. The marshal expostulated in 
vain. Mr. de Montmorency persisted in his determin- 
ation to be at his post. It was a duty which he could 
not forego. 

‘‘‘Yery well, duke,’ said the marshal, ‘since you 
speak of duty, you must not forget that I have also a 
duty to perform — which is, to see that those who are in- 
trusted to my care shall not expose their lives without 
necessity. Thus far I have spoken to you as a friend ; but 
now, as your superior officer, I command you to retire.’ 

The duke drew himself up in his saddle and re- 
plied : ‘ I will disobey you, marshal. Tin jour de hat- 
aille un Montmorency n^ a jamais eu la fievrei^^ 

* On a day of battle a Montmorency never was known to be sick. 


100 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


“ The marshal put spurs to his horse, and we flew 
over the ground. The battle had fairly begun, and 
lasted the greater part of the day. Montmorency, or 
rather his horse, kept up with us, for the reins had es 
caped from his feeble hands ; he reeled in the saddle 
like a drunken man, and clung to the mane of the noble 
animal, which seemed to be aware of the responsibil- 
ity of its charge and which followed us with fidelity. 
When the last gun was fired, Mr. de Montmorency, as 
if conscious that he was now permitted to yield his post 
and be conquered by the infirmity of nature, fell from 
his horse like a bag of corn. We picked him up, and 
earned him to his quarters in a complete state of insen- 
sibility. On that day, sir, I gave up all the bitter hos- 
tility which I had entertained against the noblesse^ and 
I came to the conclusion, that there must be something 
^ood in an institution which could inspire an ordinary 
like Mr. de Montmorency with such heroism.” 
Tlie count acknowledged this observation with a slight 
bow, but made no other response. 

When I reached Oloron, a town of six to eiglit 
thousand inhabitants, situated at the foot of the 
Pyrenees and divided into two parts by a stream which 
runs through it, and which, in the language of that lo- 
cality, is called le gave^ I learned that thirty thousand 
men under General Harispe were stationed along the 
frontiers of Spain, and prevented communication be- 
tween that country and France. On one side of tin 
stream, or gave, which divides Oloron into two parts, 
there is a considerable Spanish population composed ot 
merchants, who are large dealers in wool which the y 
import from Aragon and Navarre. They live agglom- 
erated in one quarter of the town, and form, as it were, 
a small Spanish colony in France. As I wished to 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS, 


101 


have a foretaste of Spain, I alighted at a posada, or 
Spanish inn, in preference to the more comfortable 
Hotel de France, I found ^^posada answering exactly 
the description of the like establishment in Gil Bias and 
other works on Spain. I was ushered into an immense 
kitchen, where were assembled all the family of the tav- 
ern-keeper and his numerous employees. The apart- 
ment was not only a kitchen, but also a dining-room and 
a parlor, and the dinner which I had bespoken was 
cooked in my own presence. When “mine host,” An- 
tonio, was informed that I was an American, and that 
I had no other motive in going to Spain, at a critical 
time, than that of seeing and serving a friend, he became 
very enthusiastic, his eyes flashed, and he walked up to 
me, cordially shaking both my hands which he eagerly 
grasped, and saying to me : Senor, you have a gener- 
ous heart.” 

From that moment he became as devoted to me as if 
I had been an ancient chieftain of his tribe, or clan. 
There was nothing that he was not willing to do on my 
behalf, and I was invited to put him to the test. I took 
him at his word, and told him that I had determined 
to cross the frontiers at any hazard and join my friend 
in the Carlist army. 

“Well,” said he, “if you are bent on it, I will go and 
speak to a trusty mountaineer, who, I am sure, will 
agree to take you across the Pyrenees for two hundred 
dollars in gold. He will hardly do it for less, in conse- 
quence of the great dangers to be encountered under 
present circumstances.” 

“ Then let us see him at once,” I said, “ and close the 
bargain.’’ 

We departed together, and, after a pretty long and 
rough walk through crooked and ill-paved streets, we 


102 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


arrived, in the outskirts of the town, at an isolated and 
dilapidated house of a rather forbidding appearance. 
He knock(jd at a door, which was opened bj a man 
whom my tavern-keeper saluted by the name of Ben- 
detto, and to whom he introduced me with all the for- 
mality of the Spanish etiquette. I dismissed ^‘mine 
host,” assuring him that I could find my way back. 

Bendetto was a splendid fellow in the prime of life, 
with a hooked nose like the beak of an eagle, and with 
eyes with which it seemed that he could, like that royal 
bird, have gazed at the sun. His dark hair emerged in 
ringlets from under his red Phrygian cap. His broad 
chest and muscular limbs, which combined elegance with 
strength and great powers of endurance, were clad in 
picturesque garments that reminded me of the garb or 
costume usually ascribed on the stage to Calabrian and 
Spanish bandits, or smugglers. He welcomed me to 
his roof with a highly polished courtesy, which was 
hardly to be expected from a man of his condition. 

“ I understood,” I said, “ that you will take me safely 
across the Pyrenees for two hundred dollars. Is it a 
bargain 

‘‘ Yes, senor^’’ he replied with a low bow, provided 
you do not go to assist the Christines.” 

‘‘ I go,” I answered, neither to assist the Christi- 
nes, nor their adversaries. I go merely to see a cher- 
ished friend from whom I have long been separated, 
and who is now in the Car list army.” 

“ Then it is a bargain,” he said with emphasis. 

I drew out of the side-pocket of my coat two hun- 
dred dollars in gold which I put on the mantel-piece, 
and Bendetto’s hand had just reached the glittering 
pile, when he said : ‘‘ May I know the name of that 
friend of yours ?” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


103 


“ I have no objection. It is the count of Trevino.” 

He dropped the gold as if it had burned his fingers, 
and exclaimed, Santa Maria ! El conde Take 
back this gold. May my hand be paralyzed for ever, if 
I receive any remuneration for serving a friend of el 
conde ! I was born on his domains, senor^ and those of 
my blood have for centuries served his ancestors like 
faithful vassals.” 

He gave a shrill whistle, and a beautiful girl bound- 
ed in with the soft and light spring of a fawn. 

“ Daughter, ese GoihalleTO^^\ he said, es amigo del 
conde"^^ and, turning round to me, he added, whilst 
pointing to his daughter, ‘‘ and the conde is god-father 
to the niria'^'^ feii’l)- 

She dropped me an exquisitely pretty courtesy, and 
expressed her gratification at meeting a friend of the 
count, with as much dignity and grace, and in as choice 
language, as if she had been rocked in her cradle by a 
duchess. She wore a black velvet boddice fitting close 
to her sylph-like waist, and opening in front on her 
breast, to show a snow-white linen underdress edged 
with the richest lace ; a Moorish silver chain of deli- 
cate workmanship was thrown over her neck, and held 
up a gold medallion of the Madonna glittering on her 
bosom. Her petticoat was of red cloth with black 
stripes, and did not seem to have the slightest preten- 
sion to conceal any portion of the silver embroidered 
blue stockings, which ran into the most tiny satin shoes 
which I ever saw encasing a woman’s feet. I almost 
fancied that I saw flashing the polished scabbard of the 
deadly little dagger, which Spanish women are said to 
be fond of wearing at the garter of the right knee. 
Her luxuriant hair was as black and glossy as the rav- 

* Holy Mary ! The count ! t This gentleman is a friend of the count. 


104 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


en’s plume. Two braided tresses of it bung down 
almost to her heels, and were decorated at their ex- 
tremities with bunches of wdld mountain flowers tied 
together with a gilt ribbon. Truly, she was something 
to gaze at, when she moved about the room with the 
elastic step of a goddess treading on clouds. She re- 
minded me of Byron’s description of the daughters of 
Spain : 

Yet are Spain’s maids no race of Amazons, 

But formed for all the witching arts of love. 

Though thus in arms they emulate her sons, 

And in the horrid phalanx dare to move, . 

’T is but the tender fierceness of the dove, 

Pecking the hand that' hovers o’er her mate ; 

In softness as in firmness far above 
Remoter females famed for sickening prate. 

But Bendetto brought me down from my poetical 
flight to the sober realities of life, by asking me when 
I intended to depart. 

As soon as you are ready,” I replied. “ But what 
are the preparations which I have to make, and how 
shall I carry through yonder troops and across yonder 
mountains some pretty heavy baggage, which I should 
not like to leave behind 

All that you have to do is to provide yourself with 
a hunter’s dress, such as we all use here ; have a brace 
of pistols in your belt, and a carbine slung across your 
shoulders, stout nail-studded shoes, and a sharp-pointed 
iron stick which will be of great help to you in ascend- 
ing and descending some difficult paths. I shall be 
accoutred like yourself ; but if you carry in your knap- 
sack a respectable quantity of biscuits, a good sized 
flask of the best cognac, and as mavij puros (cigars) as 
you can find room for, we may not find it amiss on our 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


105 


way. As to your baggage, it must go in another di- 
rection than the one we shall take. It will, however, 
be safely conveyed to you not long after you shall have 
reached the condos camp.’’ 

By el conde, Bendetto always designated Trevigne, 
as if there had been no other conde^ or count, in the 
world. After a pause he added : ‘‘ I promise, senor^ to 
depart with you the day after to-morrow at day-break.” 


6 * 


CHAPTEE X. 


FERNAiroO, THE BAI^DIT AND HIS DAUGHTER.— WHY THE 

OLD PRIEST OF THE MOUNTAIN REFUSED TO BECOME A 

BISHOP. 

Bendetto was one of those smugglers, or contraband- 
ists, who, from time immemorial, have waged war in 
the Pyrenees against the commercial restrictions of 
France and Spain, and who had long anticipated the 
modem doctrine of free trade and no custom-house. 
Those men have no idea whatever that they are doing 
anything illicit or immoral. On the contrary, they 
take pride in their hereditary profession. When they 
excel in it, they become popular among the frontier 
people, and almost rise up to be considered heroes on 
account of their manifold encounters with the police, 
their romantic adventures, daring courage and hair- 
breadth escapes. Bendetto was true to his word, and 
ready to set off on our perilous journey when I pre- 
sented myself at the appointed time. Dolores, the 
daughter of my guide, accompanied us ten miles to a 
spot where she was to part company with us, in order 
to stay with an aunt of hers in the neighborhood dur- 
ing the absence of her father. When she bade us fare- 
well and good speed, and when I saw her turn fear- 
lessly into a lonesome path which seemed to lead her 
into a wilderness of rocks and precipices, I asked Ben- 
detto whether he did not think it hazardous, to let her 
go by herself into a region which did not appear secure 
( 106 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


107 


even for men. He slowly and deliberately drew two or 
three heavy clouds of smoke from his cigar, and, with- 
drawing it from lips which curled with a peculiar 
smile of tranquil pride, he said : 

Seftor^ the daughter of Bendetto has nothing to fear 
as long as she treads the earth within the shadow of 
these, her native mountains. She is known to every 
man, woman and child in this community, loved and 
respected by all. Hone but a stranger would venture 
to attempt aught against her in the most secluded and 
God-forsaken spot, if there be any such in this lovely 
and grand country. But should there arise any real and 
serious danger, the nina (the girl) is as swift of foot as 
she is stout of heart, and were she to shout a cry of 
alarm, men would spring up from under these stones 
to defend her. Besides, although very gentle, she 
would not be unequal to her own protection. Aye ! 
amigo mio (my friend) she is exceedingly sw^eet of tern 
per. But, by the Holy Virgin,” and here he crossed 
himself, ‘‘ the girl is not unlike the bee, which can 
sting fiercely although full of honey.” 

Just as the sun was disappearing behind one of the 
highest mountains which stood before us, and leaving 
piled up on the verge of the horizon his wide-spread 
pavilions of celestial splendor, which night seemed loth 
to approach, I descried at the bottom of a valley a 
small village of about one hund’^ed houses. The spire 
of a modest church loomed up in the distance, and its 
chimes, which the evening breeze brought to our ears, 
announced to us the angelus, or the salutation to Mary, 
which in Catholic countries is repeated three times a 
day. "We soon arrived at the pastor’s residence, which 
was an old building almost entirely covered with a 
dark green mantle of ivy. It looked like an appro- 


108 


FERNANDO DE LEA/OS. 


priate hermitage for Time himself, if Time, instead of 
continuing, as he ever will, to be the creator, the de- 
stroyer, and the beantitier of every thing in this ever- 
changing world, had thought proper to abdicate his 
scythe and turn hermit. I almost fancied, however, 
that I saw him sitting on a rough stone bench under 
the porch of the building I have described, and that he 
had taken the shape of the more than octogenarian 
priest, whose hospitality Bendetto told me we would 
claini for the night. That individual addressed the 
venerable looking man with the most profound respect. 

I thank God, father,’’ he said, “ that you still look so 
strong and so healthy. May you be preserved to your 
flock many years to come !” 

“ Thank you, my son, for your good wishes,” replied 
the priest, rising and saluting us both with an expres- 
sion of benignity which it is difficult to forget. I am 
the servant of the Lord. His will be done in every 
thing! I have long been working in His vineyard 
according to my humble capacities ; and sometimes I 
am almost disposed to think that I am entitled to be 
dismissed, and to give way to younger and more effi- 
cient laborers. But the Master knows best.” 

“Former favors at your hands,” said Bendetto, 
“ have emboldened me, father, to apply for a night’s 
shelter under your hospitable roof.” 

“ Blessed be the stranger wffio comes in the name of 
the Lord 1” said the patriarch priest, whilst raising his 
right hand to confer on us the blessing which he ex- 
pressed, and which we received with our foreheads 
bent towards the ground. He invited us to come in 
with the most genial cordiality, and we were soon 
seated round a comfortable fire, for the evening was 
quite cold in that mountainous region. 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


109 


Shortly after we were seated, Bendetto drew from 
one of the pockets of his jacket, a beautiful pair of em- 
broidered slippers which he presented to father Hu- 
bert, for such was bis name, as an offering sent by Dolores, 
whose work they were, and surely they did credit to 
her skill and taste. 

‘‘Bless me!” exclaimed the priest, “how have I 
deserved such kindness ? It is singular how much af- 
fection is shown to me by every body 1 Now, sir,” turn- 
ing to and addressing me, “ will you believe it ? Here 
is that sweet girl, Bendetto’s daughter, for whom, hea- 
ven knows, I never did anything which ever deserved 
thanks, who never fails in loving and unceasing atten- 
tions to me. Every body is constantly loading me 
with favors, with services of all sorts, and I may 
say, with filial caresses, when I do not remember that 
I ever had the opportunity of doing anything for them. 
Truly, it passes my understanding. For instance, here 
is Bendetto, who, if common report speaks the truth, 
which I hope it does not, is a sort of wild scapegrace, 
and who, they say, is not always walking in the straight 
path of the law ; and yet he never passes by my door, 
whether engaged in his madcap expeditions or not, 
without thinking of me and bringing me valuable pre- 
sents. Now, Bendetto, what have I ever done for you 
except pray God to reclaim you from your evil ways, 
if you have any 

Bendetto, whose stern features were smoothed into 
an expression of womanly tenderness as he gazed at the 
simple old man, replied with a humorous twinkle in his 
eye : 

“ Of course, father, you never did any thing for me, 
nor for any body else in this wide world. Your long 
life has not Been a perpetual sacrifice for the good and 


110 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


comfort of others. Oh ! no, no. Who speaks to th^ 
contrary ? Who talks such nonsense ? But, neverthe- 
less, it is our whim and our pleasure, for miles and 
miles round, without any cause or reason whatever, to 
think ourselves your children, and to strive to show 
which of us loves you the best after his own fashion. 
So that, you had better make up your mind about it, 
and trouble yourself no more about the why and the 
wherefore.” 

You hear him said the priest, addressing me. 

How singular ! How unaccountable ! By the by, 
how kind he was to me in bringing you here, and how 
kind it is on your part to have come with him ! 
Don’t you see,” he added, with a benevolent smile 
which illuminated his face ; “ you are, although a per- 
fect stranger, like the rest of them, doing me a favor 
which I never can return.” 

He was interrupted by a young girl, who had come 
in evidently to set the table for supper. 

Pepita,” said the priest, “ is there in the larder any 
thing for these guests of mine? And . . . and . . . 
Pepita,” ... he now spoke, as I thought, with hesita- 
tion and a faltering voice, “ you might . . . you might 
. . . if absolutely necessary . . . and if nothing else 
is at hand . . . you might, I say, kill a pair of my 
doves. They have multiplied a good deal of late, and 
are somewhat in the way of one another . . . although, 
poor things, they are so gentle and so sweet, and they 
know me so well and love me so much, that I am not 
exactly sure that I am justifiable in depriving them of 
their natural right to live. It is a question. What do 
you think, Pepita, what do you think of it?” 

“ Pshaw !” said the girl, with an impatient toss of her 
pretty head, “you are always, father, troubling yourself 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


Ill 


about jour doves. You will never be reduced to the ne- 
cessity of eating any one of them as long as there is any 
one of us living. The gentlemen, I hope, will be pleased 
with their supper, which will soon be ready.” She 
dropped a courtesy to us, and gracefully tripped out of 
the room. 

‘‘ Did you hear her ?” said the priest. There is 
absolutely no end to what they do for me. How could 
I ever have deserved such uniform and sleepless kind- 
ness? Will you believe it? The girls of the village 
have actually taken possession of my household. They 
control it as they please, they do every thing needful in 
it, cleaning and sweeping the premises ; and each one in 
turn brings me my breakfast, dinner and supper. They 
feed and clothe me when in health, and nurse me when 
sick. In their zeal they create wants for me, merely to 
supply them, when in fact I need nothing. Is it not 
really puzzling ? For I cannot imagine what I have 
done for these people. Besides, what makes it still 
more strange is, that I am never called on to pay for 
any thing. Was the like of it ever seen ? Perhaps it 
is . . . yes ... no doubt it is,” he added musingly, 
and as if communing with himself, “ because I never 
have any money.” 

Just as he arrived at this solution of the question 
which perplexed him, the supper was brought in, much 
to Bendetto’s satisfaction and to mine. It consisted of 
a delicately roasted kid, of mountain trout, of delicious 
milk, cheese, and various other good things, to which 
we did ample justice, for we had traveled long that day, 
and our appetites had been proportionately sharpened. 
As to father Hubert, he took only a cup of goat’s milk 
with a small crust of bread and a few dried figs. 

In the course of the evening, father Hubert told me 


112 


FEIiNANDO DE LEMOS. 


that he had been educated in Tonlonse ; that it was the 
largest city he had ever seen ; that he had been the pas- 
tor of this secluded village in the mountains for sixty- 
five years, and that, during all this lapse of time, he 
had never been farther than thirty miles from his resi- 
dence. During this long run of years, faint echoes of 
the great events of the world had barely reached him. 
They had made no impression on his memory, and, if they 
had, they would have been soon forgotten. The sim- 
plicity of his mind did not exclude a faultless logic, 
when treating of such subjects as were within the lim- 
ited grasp of that mind. His faculties were not im- 
paired by age. They were such as they had ever been ; 
only, they had crystallized into a small lump. But that 
lump, whatever was its size, was still crystal of the 
purest transparency. He had read very little beyond 
some of the writings of the fathers of the Church, the 
Old and the jSTew Testament, and his breviary. When 
I mentioned some controversial works which had at- 
tracted the attention of the woi’ld, he shook his head. 

I have never heard of them,” he said, and if 
they had been within my reach, I never would have 
glanced at their contents. What did their authors aim 
at % What good could they do, if they succeeded in 
sapping the belief in the divine origin of what is uni- 
versally admitted to be the purest system of morality 
that ever w^as devised, even if it be considered as mere 
morality % As to myself, I have always believed im- 
plicitly in the revealed truths of Christianity. I have 
never had a doubt. Belief came to me as naturally as 
the faculty of breathing. I have never reasoned relig- 
ion. It has been with me a matter of instinct and feel- 
ing. I believed without effort, and with as much ease 
as I exercise any of the functions appertaining* to my 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


113 


organization, and because I could not do otherwise. To 
live was to believe. Once, a veteran of the old impe- 
rial guard told me that he always knew when ITapoleon 
had arrived and joined the army, even had he been 
sixty miles off from his presence. I asked him how he 
knew it. ‘ I knew it instantly,’ he replied ; ‘ I smelt 
him in the air — nay — I felt him.’ Thus it is with me 
in relation to the Saviour, I know His existence, His 
divinity, and His ubiquitous presence instinctively. 1 
smell Him in the air — nay — I feel Him !” 

I asked him if he had never been tempted to leave, 
for a larger sphere of action, the retired spot where he 
had spent so long a life. 

“ I was tempted once,” he replied. It was when 
the first consul rebuilt our altars and reopened our 
churches. A kinsman of mine, whom 1 had never 
seen, remembered that I was alive. How wonderful ! 
I cannot understand it, do you ? How kind it was on 
his part, and how bounteous is Providence in giving 
me so many friends, when I never did any thing for 
any body ! That kinsman, to whom I thought that I 
was completely unknown, and who, it seems, had be- 
come a power in the state, wrote to me and offered me 
a bishopric. I never was so astonished in my life. It 
was perfectly overwhelming. I, a bishop, and in a 
palace ! I felt a swimming of the head, a sort of ver- 
tigo. The demon of pride had entered into me, but I 
crossed myself, and he departed. Then I interrogated 
myself, and I asked if I had the necessary qualifications 
to be a bishop. The unhesitating and emphatic ans- 
wer was : no. But had I been qualified, could I have 
left my beloved flock ? Few indeed among the old 
people of this valley are those whom I did not baptize, 
instruct and marry ; and have I not done the same for 


114 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


all their children and grandchildren ? Could I also 
abandon the dead in yonder cemetery ? Could I think 
of no longer praying for their souls in sight of their 
tombs. IV^as I no longer to decorate those tombs with 
flowers ? Then I thought also of my doves, which, under 
my protection, have multiplied so much. They are so 
numerous, will you believe it, that I no longer know how 
many they are. They dwell in a little wood close to my 
house, at the extremity of my garden. Whenever they 
see me, the whole flock is on the wing. They strive 
which will be the first to be on my shoulders, or on my 
head. They take their food from the palm of my hand. 
They clap their wings, they spread their tails, they stretch 
their necks, they keep cooing . . . cooing, as if they 
were saying tender things to me, and they look at me 
as doves alone can look. No idolized monarch, return- 
ing to his capital after a triumphant campaign, ever 
was greeted by his subjects as my doves greet me in 
the morning. They are so kind to me ! And yet 
what have I done for them beyond giving them some 
grain for my own amusement ? Providence too is so 
much to be thanked for having inspired these innocent 
creatures with such love for the hand that nourishes 
them. What right then, I said to myself, have I to 
abandon after having taught them to rely on me ? 
Ought I not to remember that the dove is a sacred 
bird % Was it not a dove which first brouglit into the 
Ark the welcome proof of the cessation of God’s 
wrath ? Did not the Holy Ghost descend in the shape 
of a dove to sanction and consecrate the baptism of 
our Saviour ? I wish you had not determined to depart 
at day-break to-morrow. I should have taken much 
pleasure in introducing my winged friends to you. 
But to return to my kinsman and to his proposition to 


FERNAjVDO de lemos. 


115 


make me a bishop, I lost no time in writing to him, 
and giving the reasons which I have mentioned for not 
accepting his munificent offer. I never thought of it 
since, nor did he, I suppose, for this was the firet and 
the last time that I ever heard from him.” 

The worthy mau stopped here, and seemed to be 
reflecting. After a minute or two of silence, he said : 
‘‘ I am puzzled, however, to And out the motive which 
could have induced a man to whom I was unknown, 
to pass over so many learned priests, conspicuous no 
doubt for their merits, and to ferret me out — me, an 
obscure cure in this obscure spot. It must have been 
the natural affection and affinity of kindred blood. 
What is your understanding of it ?” 

I gave an evasive answer, for I could not make up 
my mind to destroy the illusions of a soul so simple 
and so pure, by suggesting that his kinsman had proba- 
bly been moved by interested motives, and had only 
thought of strengthening himself by increasing his 
family influence when giving him a bishopric. He dis- 
missed us early to our rest, after our having joined him 
in prayer, and I went to bed thinking of the Christian 
philosopher who had preferred his doves to the crosier, 
the mitre and the palace of a high dignitary of the 
Church of Kome. This was the cause, I presume, of 
my dreaming, that night, that I saw father Hubert 
carried up to Heaven, seated as it were on a cloud 
of doves, each one of which had on its head a bishop’s 
mitre. 


CHAPTER XI. 


FERNANDO JOINS AT RONCAL, IN NAVARRE, HIS SCHOODMATE 

TREVIONE, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE CARLIST ARMY. 

We departed next morning long before father Hu- 
bert and the sun were up. Our journey was an ex- 
hausting and perilous one, through mountain passes 
where it seemed only safe for the chamois to tread. But 
there was excitement in it, and the scenery was of the 
wildest and grandest. Bendetto entertained me with 
old ballads and all sorts of peculiarly Spanish stories. 
Toward noon we were within one mile of the frontier, 
and had struck into a path which, as Bendetto informed 
me, would lead to a habitation where we could obtain 
some refreshment and rest awhile, when, on our turn- 
ing round a jutting rock, we stumbled as it were on a 
score of policemen, or gendarmes^ who were probably 
returning from some expedition for the protection and 
enforcement of the revenue laws of France. The com- 
manding officer immediately advanced toward us, and, 
addressing Bendetto, whom he seemed to know, said to 
him in a bantering tone : , 

“ Friend Bendetto, I am glad to meet so noted a per- 
sonage as you are. I hope that you have nothing to 
fear from an examination of your papers.” 

To inquire for passports, with which we were not 
proidded, for the very reason that they could not have 
been granted under present circumstances, since all 
( 116 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS, 117 

communication with Spain was prohibited, and to ar- 
rest us, was but the affair of one moment. 

‘‘I hope you will excuse me, friend Bendetto,” con- 
tinued the same individual, “ if I take you back to the 
point from which you started, always giving you, for 
your comfort, the benefit of this stranger’s company, 
and if I insist on your explaining to the proper and 
competent authority why you are so near the Spanish 
frontier, through passes only known to yourself, with- 
out having complied with the formalities imposed upon 
all who wish to travel. Evil tongues, you know, accuse 
you of being an inveterate smuggler, although it has to 
this day been impossible to catch you in the act.” 

I was greatly disturbed at the idea of retracing my 
steps under an escort of French gendarmes, but Ben- 
detto looked perfectly indifferent to what had happened. 
We were then standing in a very narrow gorge between 
two ridges of mountains running in parallel lines within 
rifle shot, and covered with stunted pines and thick 
bushes. Suddenly we heard the scream of an eagle on 
the right, and another on the left, as if the royal birds 
were disposed to enter into conversation with each oth- 
er. These two screams were followed in quick succes- 
sion by the angriest and loudest tones that ever came 
out of the throats of those favorites of Jove. Surely, 
said I to myself, there must be a number of them as- 
sembled and quarreling over their prey, and I looked 
round, but in vain, to see if any one of them would 
show itself on the wing. In the meantime, Bendetto 
had lighted a cigar with much composure — what a Span- 
iard would call sosiego, and, offering another to the 
commander of the French forces, said : 

“ And so. Lieutenant Bernard, you are determined 
that I shall not accomplish the object which I have in 


118 


FERNANDO BE LEMOS. 


view, whatever it is ; and, if I interpret jour present 
intention correctly, I am your prisoner.” The French- 
man gave an unequivocal nod. 

This is unfriendly and uncourteous. Lieutenant Ber- 
nard,” continued Bendetto. ‘‘Besides, to go back 
would be very inconvenient to me and to this gentle- 
man who is my companion, and whom I serve in the 
capacity of a mountain guide, whicli, I believe, is a le- 
gitimate occupation. Wherefore, supposing I should 
not be disposed to care to be interrupted in it, and 
that I should make up my mind to resist you, wdiat 
then ?” 

“ That, methinks,” replied the person addressed, 
“ would be a perilous undertaking,” and he glanced at 
his men, who, while we had been parleying, had con- 
trived to surround us on all sides. 

“ It looks like it, 1 confess,” said Bendetto, “ but ap- 
pearances are very deceitful. Lieutenant Bernard, and 
more than one man has been defeated in his best laid 
plans, at the very moment when he thought he had 
clutched success. We, Spaniards, say that there are a 
thousand leagues between the cup and the lip. Shall I 
prove it to you ?” 

To this question which had been put in a rather de- 
fiant tone, the French commander made no other reply 
than to say : “ Attention, gendarmes. Secure the pris- 
oner, and then, forward, march!” 

Hardly had he spoken these words, when he fell back 
three steps at least, so startled was he by the deafening 
eagle cry which burst from Bendetto’s broad chest. 
Quick as lightning up sprang from the stunted pines 
and from the dense bushes on each side of the gorge 
about two hundred men with red caps on their heads, 
and in their hands glittering muskets which were lev- 


FERNANDO DE LEOMS, 


119 


eled at us. It reminded me of the well-known passage 
in the Lady of the Lake 

Instant, through copse and heath, arose 
Bonnets and spears and bended bows ; 

On right, on left, above, below. 

Sprung up at once the lurking foe ; 

From shingles gray their lances start. 

The rushes and the willow wand 
Are bristling into axe and brand 
And every tuft of broom gives life 
To plaided warrior armed for strife. 

Bendetto, however, did not wave his hand like Rod- 
erick Dim, and the red caps did not sink into the earth. 
On the contrary, they remained in full view and evi- 
dently ready for hostile action. 

“ Lieutenant Bernard,” said Bendetto, “ those men 
are Carlists, who are so near their native heath that they 
have mistaken the soil of France for their own. Be- 
sides, the frontier line is not very accurately drawn, I 
believe. Be it as it may, if you wish to go to head- 
quarters and report this invasion, let me pass on quiet- 
ly. For if I make a signal, I will bring upon you 
forces which you cannot resist. Look round, and see 
if discretion would not advise even desperate valor to 
retreat, when facing such odds. hTow, shall I pass on- 
ward without interruption, and shall we part as friends V’ 

“ Go unpunished for the present, bandit, but as friends 
we do not part,” said the lieutenant haughtily. 

Please, however, to remember,” replied Bendetto, 
“ that you are in the power of the bandit, and that he 
releases you scot free.” 

Thus ended this episode of our journey, and, in a few 
minutes, we were in Spain, escorted by those who had 
saved us from captivity. It was not long before I 


120 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


clasped Tr^vigne in my arms, and, overcome with fa- 
tigue, I threw myself on my friend’s iron camp-bed, 
and slept as if I had never intended to awake. 

I found the Carlist army, ten thousand strong, in the 
valley of Roncal near the frontiers of Aragon and 
France. Don Carlos, the pretender to the crown pos- 
sessed by Isabella II, was present, and I had to go 
through the formality of an introduction to his Eoyal 
Highness. The prince received me graciously. 

You bear a Spanish name not unknown to me,” he 
said. I hope that you return to the country of your 
ancestors with the intention of making it a home. 
Spain is now distracted by a civil war, which, with the 
blessing of God, may soon be at an end, and it will then 
be in my power to reward gratefully and liberally those 
who shall have periled all on behalf of the right cause.” 

From the manner in which these last words were ut- 
tered and from the look which accompanied them, it 
struck me that the prince was under the impression 
that I had come with the purpose of being one of his 
adherents. I thought that it was proper to undeceive 
him at once, and I told him that my grandfather having 
been sent to Louisiana in the service of Spain and hav- 
ing occupied a high position in that province, where he 
had married and where he had died, and the province 
itself having become one of the United States, I owed 
my allegiance to the country of my birth. Being an 
American by the will of Providence, this circum- 
stance and other ties would connect me forever with 
Louisiana. 

‘‘Nevertheless, I admire and venerate Spain,” I said, 
“ and I hope that she will soon enjoy that political tran- 
quillity and stability so necessary to the development of 
her physical and intellectual resources. My sole object 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


121 


in coming here was to see once more, before retuniing 
home, the cherished friend of my boyhood.” 

“ Bueno^ hueno! Yery well, very well,” replied the 
prince. Trevino is worthy of all the devotion of his 
friends, and he is the best of mine.” 

Whilst expressing this sentiment, the prince laid his 
hand on Trevigne’s shoulder as if he leaned on him for 
support. After an interview of half an hour’s duration 
with which he favored me, he dismissed me with the 
impression that he was a man of limited intelligence 
and unconquerable prejudices, of obstinate will, and 
with a heart which would have been uniformly good 
and kind, if he had been tutored from infancy as he 
should have been. 

The Christinos were approaching on all sides, and 
the Carlists were almost hemmed in. It was evident 
that perhaps the last act of that long death-struggle 
was soon to be performed. Although their enemy was 
much superior to them, not only in numbers, but also in 
equipment and in resources of all kinds — such resources 
as an organized and established government ever posses- 
ses over insurgent bands — yet the I^avarrese and the in- 
habitants of the Basque provinces did not seem to be 
discouraged. They flocked to the standard of Don 
Carlos with an eagerness which must have seemed un- 
accountable to those who did not understand their mo- 
tives. Outside of Spain the general impression was, 
that her northern provinces were supporting the cause 
of despotism — the rey netto—ihQ absolute king in the 
person of Don Carlos, in opposition to the constitutional 
and liberal government of Isabella. This was an error. 
That part of Spain had always been in the enjoyment 
of greater liberties than the rest of the Peninsula. They 
had many fueros^ or privileges, which they wished to 
6 


122 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


retain. The tendency of the new government was to 
sweep away those privileges, and to establish through- 
out the kingdom an uniformity of laws. All Spaniards 
were to be on the same footing, and no political, local, 
or social distinctions were to exist for an Aragonese, or 
a Basque, or a E^avarrese, which an Andalusian or any 
other citizen could not possess, and vice versa. The 
fact is, that Aragon, Navarre, and the Basque provinces 
may be considered as having been republics under the 
form of a monarchical government, but J-epublics not ex- 
cluding the appreciation of noble birth or race, which 
with them was as intense as in Athens and Eome. 
Among those fueros, or privileges, immunities and lib- 
erties, I shall, as a specimen, mention a few of those ex- 
isting in the valley of Bon cal in Navarre, where the 
Carlist army was encamped. No native of that valley, 
for instance, could be compelled to perform militaiy 
service unless a prince of the blood commanded in per- 
son, and every native had also the privilege granted to 
both sexes of wearing, at the marriage ceremony, a 
facsimile of the crown of Navarre, besides the posses- 
sion of other privileges of which those mountaineers 
were exceedingly jealous and proud. The distinctions 
which I have mentioned partly originated in a histori 
cal event of an ancient date. 

In the year 800, or thereabout, if I recollect rightly, 
the Moorish king Abderahman, after having ravaged a 
great portion of Spain and recently defeated King San- 
cho of Navarre, was approaching the valley of Boncal 
on his way across the Pyrenees to France. His host,” 
says an old chronicle, was innumerable, flushed with 
the confldence gained by a long series of victories, and 
gorged with spoils. The Boncalese thought that resist 
ance was impossible. The whole population of the val 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


123 


ley assembled to determine wliat they had to do. After 
mature deliberation, after having listened to the senti- 
ments of cold-blooded old age and to those of impetu- 
ous youth, the men resolved unanimously that they 
'would kill all the women and children, to save them 
from the disgrace of captivity in the hands of unbeliev- 
ers and blasphemers of ti.eir holy religion, and that, af- 
terward, they would rush on the Moslem dogs, and 
perish with arms in their hands, but not without ven- 
geance. The women, in whose presence this singular 
determination had been taken, had, in their turn, some- 
thing to say. One of them thus addressed the superior 
sex : 

The resolution which you have taken shows you 
possessed of very little sense, and demonstrates that you 
have but a very imperfect knowledge of what your 
mothers, wives and daughters really are. Do you think, 
forsooth, that we are capable of allowing ourselves to 
be made prisoners by the accursed pagans whom we 
soon expect to appear among us ? Are we not the same 
breed of women, who, century after century, have shown 
their unchangeable nature ? Are we not the descend- 
ants of those females who helped om* ancestors in driv- 
ing away from this hallowed soil the Carthaginians, the 
[Romans and the Goths, baffled in their successive at- 
tempts to conquer our unconquerable race ? Do you 
not see that you thereby weaken yourselves and strength- 
en the enemy ! Are your ranks so full that you can 
discard us ? I^^o. Give us arms, put weapons even in 

the hands of our children, and let us all perish together 
on the slaughtered bodies of those unmerciful invaders.” 

This is, I confess, a very sensible idea,” said the 
president of the assembly, “ and it is very strange that 
it did not occur to us. We accept your suggestion 


124 


FERNANDO DE LEMVE 


senora, and, with the assent of all present here, let it 
he done as you propose.” 

Thus the whole Eoncalese population prepared them- 
selves for death. They took a strong position along a 
gorge through which they conjectured that the Moors 
would pass. Abderahman, not suspecting any resist- 
ance from a few mountaineers, was advancing careless- 
ly, and, meeting no human being on his passage, con- 
cluded that all the inhabitants had fled terror-struck. 
He entered the defile where he was expected, and, when 
the whole of his army was fairly engaged in it, there 
came headlong an avalanche, not of stones, not of snow 
from the mountain sides, but of infuriated men, women 
and children, whose fierce shouts were repeated by a 
thousand echoes. The surprise, the novelty, the strange- 
ness, and the almost insane fury of the attack, the im- 
mense clamor of a frenzied multitude wrought up to 
the highest pitch of despair, produced a panic in the 
Mussulman army. The soldiers of the Crescent, who had 
performed prodigies of valor in a hundred battles, fled 
like frightened sheep. The pursuers glutted themselves 
with slaughter, and King Abderahman himself fell into 
the hands of the Spaniards. The spoils were of untold 
value, for the Moors had accumulated a very large quan- 
tity of plunder, with which they had encumbered them- 
selves, despite all the efforts of their commanders to in- 
duce them to leave it behind in some safe places. There 
never was a more absolute and decisive victory. 

The whole population of the valley met again where 
they had assembled before, when it had been resolved 
that the women and children should be put to death. 
The men said to the women : 

You have more than kept your word. Therefore 
we shall award to you the best part of the spoils, and 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS, 


125 


we give you as your share Sultan Abderahman. Put 
him to ransom, and, in exchange for his liberty, let 
him pour into your laps all his misgotten treasures.” 

‘‘ Yery well,” replied the women. “We accept your 
award, and we shall avail ourselves of the opportunity 
to teach you to appreciate us better than you have 
done. Ha ! ha ! You thought that we might consent 
to be the willing and abject slaves of that miscreant, 
and, in your wisdom, you determined to put us to death. 
We showed you that something better might be done. 
How you think that, for the sake of gold, we will spare 
the life of that infidel who has brought desolation into 
our country, and whose hands are red with the blood 
of our brethren. We will show you our disinterested- 
ness after having shown you our courage, and our re- 
solve to die when necessary.” 

Having thus spoken, they took Abderahman to a 
bridge, and, cutting off his head, stuck it on the point 
of a lance on that bridge. King Sancho of Havarre, 
who arrived shortly after with such forces as he had 
been able to recruit in haste, and with which he in- 
tended to harass the Saracens on their march to France, 
granted to the Roncalese as a reward for their prowess 
the privileges which I have recited, and to the valley a 
coat of arms consisting of a field of azure, with three 
mountains argent, spanned by a gold bridge lined with 
lances, and surmounted with the turbaned head of King 
Abderahman. This is not exactly in the language of 
heraldry, with which I am not familiar, but it is suffi- 
ciently descriptive for the purpose intended. 

The inhabitants of that valley, who pretend to be as 
old as their own Pyrenees, and as pure in their unmixed 
blood as the recently fallen snow on the tops of their 
native mountains, were so proud of their antique valor 


126 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


and other antique virtues, that they had, by the most 
stringent regulations and laws, endeavored to guard 
themselves against the introduction of any foreign ele- 
ment. Thus if any Koncalese wished to sell any real 
estate, he could not do it without the consent and sanc- 
tion of the community. The inhabitants of the valley 
were first to determine if the purchaser was acceptable 
to them. If the sale was one which could not be 
avoided, three of the notables among them were ap- 
pointed to estimate the value of the property, and a 
proportionate tax was levied on each inhabitant accord- 
ing to his means, in order to enable the three notables 
to buy the estate at the assessed price. It thus became 
the property of the community, and, as soon afterwai-d 
as it was sold to a person who gave all the guaranties 
of morality, religion and birth which were deemed re- 
quisite to entitle him to become a denizen of the val- 
ley, the amount levied by taxation was refunded 
according to the proportion paid by each. As to Jews, 
heretics, protestants. Moors, and persons condemned, 
or even suspected, by the Inquisition, the intrusion of 
any one of them would have produced an earthquake. 
iHone but a Christiano viejo y rcmoio, that is, a Chris- 
tian so old as to be rancid, according to the quaint 
meaning of the Spanish expression, could have dwelt 
within the shadow of these orthodox mountains. The 
idea that a Navarrese, a Basque, or an Aragonese, was 
to lose his peculiar autonomy, and possess only the 
name and rights common to all Spaniards, without re- 
taining his time-honored local privileges, exemptions, 
or liberties, his hereditary immunities, customs and 
prejudices, and his cherished distinctions of race and 
nationality, could not be tolerated by those proud moun- 
taineers. T ■) be assimilated to a half Moorish Andal- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


127 


iisian, or a swinish Gallician, was preposterous, and 
fired their blood with indignation. There a man is 
first an Aragonese, a Basque, or a ITavarrese, next^ a 
Spaniard. Hence the obstinate and heroic struggle for 
Don Carlos, under whose rule they hoped to remain 
what they had always been. 


CHAPTER XIL 


THE BATTLE OF RONCAL, BETWEEN THE CARLISTS AND 

CHRISTINOS. — ^DEATH OF TREVIONE. 

One evening I was sitting by the side of Trevigne, 
on the brow of a mountain which commanded a full 
view of the army of the Christines, whose numerous 
fires were blazing in the vahey below. 

Trevigne,” I said, “ I see that a battle is at hand, 
and I almost wish that you may lose it ; for a victory 
would only prolong a contest in which I think that you 
cannot succeed, and which will expose you to more dan- 
gers. I am aware that, under present circumstances, 
you cannot abandon with honor the prince’s cause, but, 
if you are defeated, it will be impossible not to acknowl- 
edge that cause to be lost. Should such be the case, I 
fiatter myself that neither you, nor his Royal Highness, 
will persist in this civil war.” 

“ What the prince will do, I do not know,” replied 
Trevigne ; “ but, as to myself, I shall have, I am con- 
vinced, nothing to say iii the matter ; for I may as well 
confess to you, my friend, that I have a presentiment, 
and my presentiments never deceived me, that I am to 
perish in the next battle. Hay — you need not look at 
me reproachfully, as if I were abandoning myself to 
some improper apprehension. It will not prevent me 
from doing my duty to the last, and with as much en- 
ergy as if I were animated with the hope of success. 
If it be a delusion, it can do no harm. Besides, I fear 
( 128 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


129 


not death. It never had any terrors for me. The 
idea of separation, it is true, from those we love, is 
very painful. But then that separation must take 
place one day or other. What matters it, after all, 
whether it comes now, or to-morrow, or a few years 
hence. I shall have shown my gratitude to the prince 
who restored me to the possession of my ancestrnl 
rights and splendor; I shall leave my wife and my 
children in the enjoyment of high rank and great 
wealth; and I know that I shall be faithfully and 
fondly remembered by you as long as you live. This 
is comforting enough. Providence has been very 
bountiful to me, and if it be decreed that I am to close 
my career in the prime of life, why should I repine ? 
Have not all my most earnest wishes been gratified ? 
Compare Trevino, the ragged boy and the inmate of a 
hovel in Louisiana, wfith Trevino the grandee of Spain 
the head of a house illustrious for centuries, the com- 
mander of an army and the main support of a pretender 
to the crown of Spain. Most fervently do I thank God 
for all that he has done for me. But it is the destiny 
of those patrician families who have adorned the annals* 
of history, to live in perpetual storms. Such also ha& 
been the fate of my ancestors from time immemorial 
I do not remember one of them who had a quiet and 
easy life. Dwellers on the alpine heights of society, 
they had often to meet the thunderbolt and the ava- 
lanche. It was the natural consequence of their exalted 
position. Therefore, you will admit tJiat the dangerous 
course in which I am engaged is at least in conformity 
to family precedents.” 

This last phrase was delivered with a snide, but that 
smile was sad, indeed. He added : 

Besides, this world is very prosaic and humdrum. 

6 ^ 


130 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


Materialism and utilitarianism are the gods of the age, 
I do not belong to it certainly, and in it 1 feel out of 
place. What would be Lope de Yega, Murillo, Cordova 
the great captain, or Isabella the Catholic and sublime 
queen, or the brightest genius who ever honoi’ed the 
human race, when compared to a money-making ma- 
chine that promises to put a dollar in every body’s 
pocket? Would not every body run after the machine, 
and let genius freeze in the cold ? I have been a 
dreamer, as you well know, since my infancy, and I 
am afraid that, like Don Quixote, I am a little cracked 
about chivalry. I am conscious that I am an anachron- 
ism in flesh and blood. I ought to have existed in the 
days of the Cid. What is such a madman as I am good 
for in the days of bankers, stockjobbers, demagogues, 
and mud worshipers? Might it not be a blessing, if 
death removed me from an uncongenial world to an- 
other where perhaps eternal bliss awaits my soul ? There 
is a passage in Scott’s ‘ Old Mortality ’ which speaks 
my feelings through the lips of Claverhouse better than 
I could do myself, and which has remained indelibly 
fixed in my memory. ‘ It is not the expiring pang,’ 
says the noble chieftain, ‘ that is worth thinking of in 
an event that must happen one day, and may befall us 
in any given moment — ^it is the memory which the sol- 
dier leaves behind him like the long train of light that 
follows the sunken sun — that is all which is worth car- 
ing for, which distinguishes the death of the brave or 
the ignoble. When I think of death, Mr. Morton, as 
a thing worth thinking of, it is in the hope of pressing 
one day some well fought and hard won field of battle, 
and dying with the shout of victory in my ear — ^that 
would be worth dying for, and more, it would be worth 
having lived for.’ ” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


131 


As lie spoke these words with the enthusiasm of an- 
other Grsehame, a gun thundered in the valley below, 
sending to us the reverberating echo of its angry voice. 
It seemed an answer to Trevigne’s wish. It impressed 
me with a sort of superstitious awe, and, glancing at my 
friend’s face which, by the light of our camp fire, stood 
in bold relief out of the background of surrounding 
darkness, I felt a sharp pang shooting through my heart 
and tears filling my eyes, as I thought of the loss with 
which I might soon be atfiicted.” 

The CarHst army was intrenched behind a small river 
which ran through the valley of Roncal. It had its 
centre at the village of Isava situated on that stream, 
and its left and right wings extended to hills fortified 
with redoubts. The Christines, confident in their supe- 
rior numbers, attacked with great vigor the whole line 
of the Carlists at seven in the morning, and during three 
hours the fate of the battle hung uncertain, when it be- 
came evident that the enemy was concentrating his 
forces upon Isava, to pierce the centre of his adversary. 
Forming themselves into a deep column, the Christines 
advanced steadily, being only retarded but not foiled in 
their movements by the determined resistance which 
they met and by their heavy losses. On the left wing 
of the Carlists there was a body of cavalry five hundred 
strong, posted on an eminence, more to keep the enemy 
in check by a demonstration than to act efiectually, for 
they had received the order not to allow themselves to 
be drawn into any serious engagement, but to hold 
themselves in readiness, should there be any danger of 
defeat, to move rapidly to the quarters of Don Carlos, 
which were a little back of Isava, and to escort him to 
a place of safety. As I had resolved when I entered 
Spain, not to participate in the civil war, I had taken 


132 


FEI^NANDO DE LEMOS. 


mj stand with that corps, which occupied a spot con- 
veniently proper to enable me to observe the various 
phases of the battle. I soon acquired the conviction, as 
I looked at the plain below, that the heavy column 
which was step by step pushing forward on Isava with 
irresistible doggedness, would carry it before long, un- 
less soon broken and thrown back by a Successful charge 
of cavalry supported by light artillery. The moment 
was so critical, that, in spite of myself, my excitement 
rose to the highest degree of intensity, particularly 
when Trevigne put himself at the. head of a body of 
fifteen hundred cavalry which he had kept in reserve 
on his right wing. I saw that he was conscious of the 
danger which I had perceived, and that he had deter- 
mined, by leading a charge in person to change the for- 
tune of the day. By heaven ! gallant was that charge 
and worthy of him. Murat could not have done better. 
But he and his brave followers receded in shattered 
fragments, like the waves of the sea breaking on an im- 
movable rock. Again they formed and again they 
rushed upon the serried ranks of the enemy, only to be 
brought down by the thrust of the bayonet, by the 
musket shot, or the cannon ball. 

I felt my heart rising to my throat, and my hand 
mechanically grasping one of the pistols in my holsters. 
Almost one third of* Trevigne’s men had fallen, but I 
saw him rally them as before and form them into a 
compact body. Waving his hand aloft and pointing 
to the enemy, he seemed to address them in those 
burning words which I knew must burst from his lips 
on such an occasion. ISTo doubt he exhorted them to 
retrieve th6ir former repulses, to avenge the dead, and 
to die, or to conquer. They replied with loud hurrahs, 
and, bending on the necks of their horses, burying the 


FERNAA^O DE LEMOS. 133 

spurs into their sides and loosening the reins, they came 
upon the enemy like a whirlwind. I lost sight of them 
for a few minutes in the cloud of dust and smoke 
which rose over them. But I shouted involuntarily as 
if intoxicated by the scene, when I descried them forc- 
ing their way through the broken ranks of that terrible 
column. Trevigne had seized a flag which he waved 
as an encouragement and signal to his troops. But 
every man who fell among the Christines was replaced 
by another, and another, and a gathering and ever in- 
creasing mass of them surged round Trevigne like a 
raging stream. A human tide literally poured upon 
him. I saw his horse rear, leap forward, and fall 
down with his master. At that sight, something like 
a flash of lightning passed before my eyes, my brains 
seemed on fire, and, without knowing what I was do- 
ing, but driven on by an irresistible impulse, I 
shouted : Sons and lions of l^avarre, follow me to 
the rescue of your chief.” I dashed down the hill 
like a madman without thinking, and without caring 
if my appeal had been responded to. But the clat- 
ter of many hoofs came thick behind me, and yells 
of defiance rent the air. We were all mad, I think, 
and the horses too, for horses and men fought like 
incarnate devils. We went through the left flank of 
the enemy like a thunderbolt, and joined just in 
time the almost overpowered forces of Trevigne. 
Elated by this reinforcement they redoubled their ef- 
forts; and, being seconded by a battalion of artil- 
lery wfliich with four pieces opportunely came to our 
assistance, we remained masters of the battle-field. 
The victory was ours, and the enemy retired. I found 
Trevigne alive, but, to my unspeakable grief, mor- 
tally wounded. As soon as he recovered his senses. 


134 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


he pressed my hand tenderly, and said in faint ac- 
cents : 

“Thank God, Fernando, I owe yon this victory. 
When I fell, I thought of you. I knew that you 
were looking on, and I felt that you would come. 
Another presentiment, you see, which has also turned 
out to be true. My life ebbs fast away. The knight 
dies on a well-fought field of battle as he desired, 
with his trusty friend by his side. It is well. Carry 
my sword to my boy, and to my wife this portrait of 
hers, which I always wore next to my heart. Take 
my body to the family vault. My soul, I trust, goes 
to where I hope to meet again and for all eternity, 
those I loved in this world. Tell the prince” .... 

Death closed his lips. I kissed that pale face, which 
was more beautiful after life had departed than it had 
ever before appeared to me. His features had assumed 
the expression of one who gazes at a vision of unex- 
pected beatitude and glory. His companions in arms 
covered his body with the standards they had taken 
from the enemy, and the funeral march began amidst 
the tears and lamentations of the whole army. I had 
to be carried on a litter, for a ball had badly wounded 
me in the left leg, and I have retained to this day the 
scar which it produced. The ball had penetrated to 
the bone, glanced round it, and gone out on the other 
side. Two months afterward I was limping on the 
Boulevard de Grnid in Paris, when I met one of my 
college friends, whom I had left in the enjoyment of 
the pleasures of that gay capital. 

“ Halloo !” said he. “We have all been wondering 
for the last four months at your sudden disappearance. 
But what is the matter with your leg?” 

“ Hothing worth mentioning,” I replied. “ I have 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


135 


been rusticating and hunting in the country. A fool- 
ish game -keeper took me for a hare and gave me a 
taste of Iris slugs. That ’s all. By the by, what news 
from home 

“ N^othing of consequence, except that Yerdier, your 
quondam chum and favorite, is dead.” 

The wretch ! How did it happen ? Did he bleed 
to death through his proboscis 

‘‘Ho. The fellow married an heiress as bad tem- 
pered and ugly as she was rich. But wealth, you 
know, has wings. An untoward law-suit deprived her 
of it. This circumstance did not improve her looks, 
nor her temper, and she tormented her husband so 
pertinaciously and with such diabolical skill, that, 
tough as he was, he could not stand it and drank him- 
self into a coffin.” 

I went away musing on this piece of news and say- 
ing to myself : how strikingly in harmony with their 
respective character is the mode of death of those two 
men so widely dissimilar ! Yerdier, the jealous-minded 
and the embodiment of meanness, sinks in a barrel of 
whiskey, and the magnanimous and heroic Trevigne, on a 
battle-field and in the lap of victory! But I stop 
abruptly, from the fear of falling into a moralizing 
mood like a sexagenarian spinster. Besides, I must 
not forget that I am in Paris, the last spot on earth 
where it would be in good taste, to permit the face to 
betray any gloom of the mind and any aching of the 
heart. 


CHAPTEE Xm. 


FERNANDO RETURNS TO LOUISIANA AND BECOMES AC- 
QUAINTED WITH TINTIN CALANDRO, THE CRAZY SEXTON 
OF THE ST. LOUIS CEMETERY, BUT IN WHOSE BRAIN 
THERE YET LURKS MUCH WISDOM. 

Shortly after the events which I have related, I re- 
turned to Louisiana. There was then living in 'New 
Orleans a man called Tintin Calandro. His true 
name was Augustin Calandrano, which, hj the little 
blackguards of the city who were ever at war witli 
him, had been abbreviated into Tintin Calandro. He 
was said to be a Parisian by birth, although I suspect 
from his name that, if he was not actually a native of 
Italy, he was at least of Italian origin. Tintin had 
been twenty years the sexton and watchman of the St. 
Louis cemetery, of which he had the entire charge, and 
he was so identified with it in the eye of the whole 
population, that, when a person was in very bad health, 
it was customary to say : “ He is on his way to Tintin 
Calandro.” He had in his employment two stalwart 
negroes, who worked for him in that line of business 
which he had adopted, and who dug mud holes in the 
ground for the tag-rag of mortality, and built tombs 
above the ground for those of the dead who had pre- 
tensions to gentility. He kept at the same time a shop 
for marble slabs to be put on the graves of the wealth- 
ier portion of his customers ; he wrote epitaphs when 
requested, in the lapidary style, and was even reported 
( 136 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


137 


to be felicitous in that kind of composition. He had 
also the reputation of having some talent for statuary, 
and of being no mean performer on the violin, accord- 
ing to the judgment of those who had heard him at a 
distance, for he was a man of solitary habits, and never 
associated with any body. He would not therefore 
have played for any human being. But, when he felt 
musically inclined, he went at night to the cemetery, 
of which he had the keys, and which was surrounded 
by high walls ; and, betaking himself to its very cen- 
tre, so as to be as far as possible from any human hear- 
ing, that eccentric individual would for hours entertain 
himself with his favorite instrument. 

Pale as a ghost is supposed to be, dwarfish in size 
and as thin as a wafer, Tintin Calandro was always 
dressed in old clothes cut after so strange a fashion, that 
it was hard to imagine wdiere he had got them. A long 
curved nose, the tip of which almost reached his wide 
but thin-lipped mouth, separated his large coal-black 
eyes, which sometimes scintillated wildly as if lighted 
with the fire of insanity. The forehead, which rose 
above a sharp and razor-like face, was disproportionately 
broad and high. There seemed to be from his brows 
to the top of his head near twice the space that there 
was from his brows to his chin. So massive was his head, 
that his crane-like neck and his thin face looked like 
the blade of a knife stuck into a square block. ■ It was 
a singular deformity. The oddness of his appearance 
was completed by a profusion of very white hair comb- 
ed back from his forehead with much care and pre- 
cision, and gathered behind into a cue secured with 
a black ribbon twisted into manifold bands. His arms 
fell down almost below his knees and tapered off into 
the longest fingers that had ever been seen. 


138 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


I had been compelled, like the rest of the population, 
to take notice of this fantastic looking manikin, and 
had been more than once amused bj the laughable 
sight which he presented, when pursued in the streets 
by the mischievous boys who delighted in flinging 
brick-bats at his diminutive legs, in mere fun, and in 
exercising their wits at his expense. This was done, 
however, with some degree of prudential reserve, for 
Tintin Calandro, although overlooking these attacks 
with good-natured patience, was very fierce when too 
much provoked ; and when he happened to lose his 
temper, he would rush upon his youthful assailants 
with the agility, of a monkey, and no Trojan ever fled 
from the wrath of swift-footed Achilles with more 
rapidity and terror, than the little ragamuffins of New 
Orleans ran from the rod with which Tintin Calandro 
was always provided. From long experience, liowever, 
the boys had discovered a sure sign which indicated to 
them that Tintin was teased beyond endurance, and they 
would then abstain from trespassing any further on his 
comfort and tranquillity. When Tintin’s clothes, which 
habitually hung loose about his emaciated body, began 
unaccountably to swell and bristle like the feathers of a 
hen which is preparing to defend its brood, Tintin’s 
assailants took care to beat a hasty retreat, and not 
wait for the flashing rod which they had been taught to 
dread. My acquaintance with that individual would 
have probably remained superficial and distant, had it 
not been for one circumstance which brought me into 
contact with him, and which, leading to a long and 
familiar intercourse, enabled me to do full justice to an 
extraordinary character which, for a length of time, 
had seemed to me so ridiculous. 

The mortal remains of one whom I loved with an 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


139 


intenseness of passion which still glows to this day 
under the accumulated frosts of sixty winters, had 
been deposited in the St. Louis cemetery. Since that 
event one month had elapsed, during which, with the 
help of a rope ladder armed with hooks of steel which 
I flung over the walls, T had easily penetrated into that 
asylum of the dead. Every night, at ten o’clock, no 
storm or foul weather had prevented me from carrying 
thither a bouquet to be laid on a recently built tomb. 
It Avas the hour when her pure spirit had departed from 
this world. Such was one of my reasons for having 
selected it, and the other was the hope of escaping de- 
tection at that time of night. To be suspected of a 
parade of grief would have been hateful to me. When 
the heart is forever crushed, there springs up from what 
remains of it a chastity of soitow which shrinks from 
mortal eye. I wondered myself at the strange and 
wild delight which I took in seeking that tomb, when 
the tempest howled, and when in the darkness I had to 
be guided by the flashes of lightning. I loved to draw 
from under my cloak the flowers which I had protected 
from the pitiless rain, and deposit them in all their 
fi'eshness on the cold and drenched marble. She had 
so loved flowers ! 

One night when the moon was shining in all her in 
describable glory, and was bathing the whole cemetery 
in a flood of placid light, I was standing where 1 used to 
stand, and gazing at the same object. A sort of trance 
stole over me, and I had lost insensibly the conscious- 
ness of thought and feeling, when I was awakened by 
a slight touch on the shoulder. I turned round, and, 
to my surprise, I faced Tin tin Calandro. He looked 
graver than usual, and I thought that I detected some 
emotion in his face. He had in his hand a superb 


140 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


bouquet, wbicb he laid on the tomb, saying to me with 
a voice full of tender sympathy : 

She loved flowers — did she not? I guessed as much, 
when I saw what you were doing night after night. 
You look surprised — do you? You thought that no 
human eye had observed you, but thought so erroneous- 
ly. ISTo intruder here can deceive the vigilance of Tin- 
tin Calandro, the friend, the guardian, the watch-dog 
of the dead. He is always at his post, and he saw you 
the first time you came. Because I had not barked, 
you imagined that I was asleep. Ha ! ha ! ha ! and 
he chuckled with evident glee at his not having been 
foiled. Who can deceive Tintin Calandro any more ?’’ 
he continued. “ Attempt it not, young man. If it be 
your fancy to come here every night, and hold spiritual 
communion with her whom the busy world calls on you 
to forget, I am not the man to object to it. But climb no 
longer over the walls. Come to my house ; you know, 
no doubt, that it is close by. Bap at the street window ; 
it will open ; and you will find on its sill the key of the 
small gate through which I pass into the cemetery, and 
which is exactly in front of my dwelling. When you 
retire, your visit to the dead being paid, drop the key 
like a letter into the small aperture which is in the 
centre of my door, and now, good night.” Without 
giving me time to reply, he vanished from my sight as 
if he had suddenly melted into the invisible air. 

As he was the keeper of the cemetery, and account- 
able for aU that might occur in it, he could have en- 
forced the regulations which prohibited my being there 
at that time of night. I felt therefore grateful for the 
kindness with which he had treated my trespass, and I 
determined to comply with his request.. Accordingly, 
on the next night, at ten o’clock, I knocked at his win- 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


141 


dow. It flew open. Nobody was to be seen, but I 
found the promised key wliere be had told me. Several 
months elapsed, during which I continued my knocks 
at Tintin Calandro’s window and my regular visits to 
the cemetery, but without obtaining a glimpse of him. 
At last, one night, he appeared again at my elbow and 
at the usual place. 

“ You have grown upon my esteem,” he said. I 
see that the feeling which brings you here is too deep- 
seated to be evanescent.” He looked at me with eyes 
which seemed to become luminous as he steadily fixed 
them on mine, and continued : You must think with 
me that something yet lives in that tomb, or else you 
would not come here night after night, and month after 
month, merely to contemplate the monument enclosing 
an inanimate object which has no perception of your 
devotion. For you the dead is not dead, and you are 
right. You are a man after Tintin Calandro’s heart. 
You must be one of the few elect to whose souls revela- 
tions are made. I should like to know more of you. Tf 
you feel similarly disposed towards me, at midnight I 
am always among the dead. Seek me there.” Having 
thus spoken, he disappeared like a goblin. 

A few nights after this incident, having come to the 
cemetery later than usual, I found myself within its 
walls, when the town clock struck twelve. Just as I 
was preparing to depart, I heard some preluding strains 
on the violin. They were evidently by a master hand. 
I knew at once who the musician was. There could 
be at such a place, and at such an hour, no other than 
Tintin Calaudro. I listened, and was soon riveted to 
the spot where I stood. The mellifluous notes of the 
instrument came floating on the air, charming the ears 
and soothing the soul. The impression conveyed by the 


142 


FEI^NANDO DE LEMOS. 


harmonious adagio whicli he played, was that of repose 
— of blissful obliyion of the cares of the world. It 
was a hymn to the night with its balmy wings and its 
consolations to the weary. The tunes were descriptiye ; 
they had the power of language. They told, as clearly 
as the human yoice could, that it was night — a glorious 
and calm night with its illumination of stars escorting 
the unclouded moon, which sailed chastely effulgent 
athwart the heavenly vault. They made one hear the 
rocking of the cradle by the mother’s hand and her 
sweet lullaby. It was followed by a gorgeous variety 
of fantasias chasing each other with the capricious ir- 
regularity and the confusion of dreams, and ending 
with the shrill crowing of the cock. Day was break- 
ing ; a concert of birds saluted the rise of the sun. A 
chorus of villagers broke forth, whilst moving to the 
field where the harvest expected their sickles. Then 
came a duet between a shepherd and shepherdess. 
They pledged their faith to each other in accents which 
gushed from the fervid strings of the inspired instru- 
ment. The lovers must have stood on the bank of 
some mountain stream ; for now and then the rush of 
a waterfall was heard during pauses in their impas- 
sioned dialogue. Suddenly the instrument imitated 
the beating of the drum and the loud clangor of the 
trumpet. Alas ! The shepherd had become a con- 
script ; he was marching to the enemy. Then came 
sweeping on the breeze distant lamentations. They 
must have been those of the disconsolate bride. Boom, 
boom, boom ! The artillery roared. Bow, row, row ! 
The musketry rattled. The fire grew gradually less 
spirited, and finally gave way to a funeral march. The 
body of the conscript was to be carried back to its last 
resting-place. The organ peals ! we are in a church. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


143 


The lequiem for the dead is sung. Then the discharge 
of the muskets of a platoon over the grave of the 
youthful soldier, and here ends the poem. 

Wild with enthusiasm, I rushed to the spot whence 
the music had come. 1 found Tintin Calandro on his 
back, stretched at full length on a tomb, with his eyes 
fixed on vacancy and liis violin lying across his breast. 
I hugged him in my arms and exclaimed : 

“ Tintin Calandro, you are the greatest violinist in 
the world. I never heard any thing like this in any 
of the capitals of Europe. What on earth are you do- 
ing here ? You have a fortune in your bow, and you 
will be the admiration of the elite of mankind.” 

Thank you for your compliments,” he replied 
gravely. “ They are well meant and sincere, no doubt, 
although they sound like extravagant flattery. But 
you don’t know what you are talking about. What 
makes you suppose that I care a fig for a fortune, or 
the admiration of mankind. Neither Paris, nor Lon- 
don, can have for me the attractions which this ceme- 
tery possesses. One day, or rather one night, you may 
discover it. For the present,- I am not in a mood to 
talk. Good-by ; we meet again, I hope.” This time 
he bowed to me with great formality, and, clearing a 
tomb at one bound with the agility of a deer, he dis- 
appeared at once, leaving me to ponder over the eccen- 
tiic being with whom I promised myself to become 
better acquainted. 

I waited with impatience for the next night. When 
Tintin saw me approaching, he said : “ Is it me, or my 
violin you are seeking ?” 

Both,” I replied. 

One is absent. You must be contented with one- 
half of what you expect.” 


144 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


“ I sliall not be too exacting tins tim( I answered 
in tlie same tone, “ but I shall hope for better luck in 
the future.” 

Tintin Calandro wound his arm round mine, and 
we took a stroll among the tombs. In this interview 
and in those which followed, I discovered that Tintin 
Calandro had received the most brilliant education. 
Who could Tintin be ? How came such a man to be 
the sexton of a cemetery, a sort of grave-digger ? I 
soon made an effort to satisfy my curiosity and solve 
that enigma. That effort, however, was the first and 
the last. “ I have chosen,” said Tintin on that occa- 
sion, ‘‘ to allow you to know more of me than perhaps 
it was wise to do. But thus far shall you go, and no 
farther. Let this be well understood, or all intercourse 
between us ceases at once — much to my regret — for I 
confess that I need your company. It has become a 
relief to me. But remember that as long as I live, I 
must be known outside of these walls as having no 
greater fund of intellect and culture, than that which 
befits the condition of grave-digger and custodian of 
the St. Louis cemetery.” 

All Hallows, a religious feast in honor of all the 
saints, which takes place, according to the usages of 
the Homan Catholic Cliurch, on the first of Hovember, 
was drawing near — to be followed by All Souls’ day, 
another feast, on the second of the same month, the 
object of which is to supplicate for the souls of the 
dead. When these solemnities are to occur, Catholic 
cemeteries are beautifully decorated with vases con- 
taining fiowers, with odoriferous bushes or shrubs, with 
crowns or garlands of immortelles, or other lasting blos- 
soms, with lighted candelabras and lamps, and such 
other ornaments as may be deemed appropriate to 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


145 


tombs, and expressive of the regrets and tender remem- 
brances of those wbo have survived the objects of their 
affection. On this occasion, all the tombs in the St. 
Louis cemetery had been repaired, brushed up, or white- 
washed, and looked new, save a few forgotten ones 
which had reached the utmost stage of dilapidation. 
On the two festivals which I have mentioned the 
crowd was greater than usual, and never had the old 
cemetery looked to better advantage in its holiday 
dress. Tint in Calandro was much elated, and I found 
him in his best mood. 

‘‘"Was not my cemetery a beautiful garden to-day V' 
he said to me. ‘‘ What a time-honored and soul-mov- 
ing custom ! How touching is the homage to the dead ! 
All of it is not unalloyed gold, it is true. There is in 
it a good deal of counterfeit, sentimental tinsel, sheer 
affectation, mere conformity to usage without the en- 
listment of the heart, much of the love of display, 
much of doing as others do, much of the wandering of 
the eye in noticing with envious admiration the vani- 
ties of the world which are SAveeping by in rusthng 
robes, and, therefore, proportionately less of religious 
meditations and tl linking of the departed spirits to 
which the day is consecrated. Many, alas, come mere- 
ly to see and be seen ; there are idlers, trihers and even 
scoffers in the crowd. Still it is good that there be a 
connecting link between the spiritual world and the 
material one, and that there be at least one day in the 
year on which cemeteries shall be crowded in commem- 
oration of the dead. How that all this multitude has 
gone away, is it not a sight that speaks to the soul, 
those flower-strewn and perfumed tombs? What a 
pleasing contrast in this solitude and profound silence, 
with the bustle and animation Avhich prevailed 
7 


146 


FEI^NANDO DE LEMOS. 


liere during the dsty ! At this hour comes the turn of 
invisible visitors more grateful to me and more accept- 
able than those in the flesh. The tenants of those 
tombs are now moving round us in as dense a crowd 
as the one you lately saw. They flit from tomb to 
tomb ; they inliale the perfumes of the flowers oflered 
to tliem. Some rejoice at the fond tokens of affection 
which they have received ; others look with mortifica- 
tion at tlieir neglected graves. Truly, my friend, this 
cemetery is at the present moment full of life, but not 
the life which you know. There is in death an exist- 
ence you dream not of. You look at me with surprise. 
I read your thoughts; you think I am mad. Very 
well, think so if you like; I have no objection. But, 
tell me : what is death ? Do you know anything about 
it ? Do you know whence came the soul of Lazarus, 
when recalled to the body? Was it from Heaven, 
from Hell, or from Purgatory ? Do you know if the 
spirit of Lazarus was not at the time in or about his 
tomb, in an expectant and transition state ? Why 
should not those whom we call the dead, remain with- 
in our atmosphere under different conditions of exist- 
ence, until the promised day of the resurrection ? It 
might account for some of those phenomena which the 
pride of science rejects, because it can not explain. 
Why, whilst awaiting the day of final judgment, 
should not the dead retain their connection with this 
world, and in that connection, and in the knowledge of 
those human events which may be the consequences of 
their own deeds when they were in the flesh, find a 
certain degree of reward, or punishment, preparatory 
to that final bliss, or eternal misery, which is to be de- 
creed in the universal judgment that is announced to 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


147 


We had, by this time, reached in our stroll an un- 
sightly tomb made of brick, which bad crumbled to 
pieces and almost sunk into the earth. Weeds and 
creeping yines had spread over it. I pointed it out to 
him, saying : Here is neglect for you.” 

Ay,” exclaimed he, stamping his foot with indig- 
nation. “ Accursed be those who neglect it ! She who 
is buried there was the daughter of a man who, to use 
a common phrase expressive of a common idea, had 
heen eminently successful in life^ for he had acquired 
more than a million of dollars, although born poor. 
The fellow was a genius for gathering and amassing. 
His mother used to say : I am not uneasy about Peter. 
He will make his way ; for when he comes to see me, 
rather than go away Avith empty hands, he carries my 
napkins.” By one of those freaks of the devil which 
are but too often seen, this son of mammon, who look- 
ed like Hyperion when in reality a satyr, and whose 
depth of meanness was such that no plummet could 
ever reach it, married a woman who was his very op- 
posite in heart and mind. The antipodes had been 
brought togetlier. There never could have been a 
union of more antipathetic materials. It followed that 
she had either to die outright, or to be stupefied, or 
petrified by a long lingering martyrdom. She was 
stupefied and petrified. One w^ould suppose that, as a 
general rule, a wedlock of ' this nature must be barren. 
It is not so, however ; and in this particular case it was 
fruitful, and brought into the world two girls and one 
boy. One of the girls, when grown into womanhood, 
surpassed her mother in loveliness, but lacked her pow- 
ers of endurance. She was a lily of heaven dropped 
from its choicest garden spot, and not capable of resist- 
ing: the rou<rh winds of this earth. Her father married 

O O 


148 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS.^ 


her to one who was congenial to himself, and not to lier 
— to one much older than she was, and whose obtuse 
conscience was as tough as the hide of a rhinoceros. 
But what of that ? He was one of those men whom 
nature seems to have destined to be but a sort of ma- 
chine to coin shillings. If the shillings come out fast 
and bright out of the human mint, that is all whicli is 
expected of the workmen ; their vocation is fulfilled. 
Such a son-in-law was, of course, after old Peter’s heart, 
and the leper and the angel were united. In less than 
six months the bride had withered, a coffin became her 
garment, and this cold pavement here her couch. Ho- 
body knew what was her ailment. The physicians 
shrugged their shoulders, looked wise, and said that 
nothing was the matter with her. And yet she was 
perishing, oh, with such a melancholy smile on her 
lips, and with eyes in which tears would often glitter 
as morning dew on the parched grass. I could have 
told those physicians what was the matter with her, 
and I will tell you. She had seen the silver veil with- 
drawn from Mokanna’s brow. That was all ; that was 
enough — and more than enough.” 


CHAPTER XIV. 


IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT THERE IS NO BETTER SCHOOL 
FOR PRACTICAL AND MORAL INSTRUCTION THAN A GRAVE- 
YARD. 

Seating himself on a tomb, Tintin Calandro re* 
mained silent for a few minutes. He then spoke in 
these words : 

‘‘ Is it not in the Book of Revelations that we read ? 
‘ A voice from above w' as heard which said : “ Blessed 
are the dead.” ’ — ‘ Blessed are. the dead,’ said pagan an- 
tiquity, ‘ for the favorites of the gods die young.’ It 
is an instinct of human nature to venerate and propi- 
tiate the dead, as is testified bj the tombs of Egypt, 
Greece and Rome, without mentioning other countries 
less celebrated. Is it not because, in all ages and in all 
nations, man, whether in a state of civilization or bar- 
barism, feels that there is immortality in death — that it 
is nothing more than a change of existence ? It is im- 
possible to be a materialist and to decorate a tomb with 
flowers. Hence I rejoice to see that decoration, because 
materialism excludes the only guaranty which we have 
for morality. Why should perishable matter care for 
virtue, if matter could care for any thing ? Materialism 
is the denial of God ; and if there is no God, if our 
brief material existence here is followed by annihila- 
tion, w^hy should not the strong treat the weak just as 
the wolf treats the lamb ? The study of nature teaches 
us that she never does anything without an object, al- 

( 149 ) 


150 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


tliougli we may not always discover it. Matter, once 
created, never perishes. Science has demonstrated that 
to us. It may be modified and decomposed, but it sub- 
sists in a different form. Omnipotence does not create 
to annihilate. Creation and annihilation are irrecon- 
cilable. 

If matter is not to perish, why should thought and 
feeling, supposing them to be nothing but the emana- 
tions of matter, and therefore matter also ? If that part 
of my body which is thought and feeling perishes no 
more than the other material portions of that same 
body, and can only be decomposed and modified like 
the rest, it follows that, however infinite in their frac- 
tional number may be the atoms into which thought 
and feeling may be divided and subdivided, each atom 
cannot cease to be thought and feeling, and must re- 
tain, as thought and feeling must infallibly do from their 
very nature or essence, the consciousness or recollection 
of the aggregation of soul and intellect of which it was 
once a part ; and if my former intellectual organization 
is not annihilated in toto, then I am immortal and still 
living in every remaining atom of it, notwithstanding 
the modifications and divisions to which it may have 
been submitted, and each atom of my intellect, however 
separated it may be from the whole, must retain the 
consciousness of the past, I was, and of the present, I am. 

‘‘ But intellect and soul are not and cannot be mat- 
ter. Why should and how could matter think and 
feel? Why give matter a craving for spirituality? 
Who gave it? Did matter give it to itself ? If not, 
whence is it derived ? Can matter desire that of which 
it is not susceptible and of which it can have no idea ? 
Why is matter gifted with the capacity of believing in 
God, when there is no God, as the materialists afiirm? 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


151 


How can matter have faith in its own spiritual nature, 
when it has no such nature ? For I am told that I am 
nothing but matter, and yet I have that faith which is 
in conflict with that assertion, and I feel that there is a 
spirit in me. How can matter be capable of such de- 
ception toward itself? Why place conscience in our 
breast ? Who placed it there ? Conscience, it is said, 
is nothing but the result of education. But this is no 
answer. If conscience is nothing but the result of edu- 
cation, how came we to be capable of the education that 
produces and. forms conscience? How comes matter 
to create such illusions for itself, and be their victim 
and dupe? How can it be its own regulator and 
legislator ? How can it be checked and couti*oled by 
what is of its own creation, or what is an emanation of 
itself, as thought and feeling are said to be ? When 
that part of myself which is matter craves with an al- 
most insatiable desire the gratification of an appetite 
appertaining to its nature, there comes something which 
is called my will and which conquers the appetite. Has 
that wiU come out of that matter of which it is the mas- 
ter ? If not, what is it ? The doctrine of materialism, 
as taught by pretenders to science, is not true on the 
face of it, because it would defeat the very object for 
which man has been created in this world, and that is, to 
live in a social condition and to attain civilization. Can 
we, in a purely material existence which begins and 
ends here, conceive any room for the reciprocal rela- 
tions of duty, and the necessities and obligations of civ- 
ilized Hfe ? If we are nothing but matter, how have we 
aspirations, which do not belong to, and which could 
not proceed from, matter, because they are antagonis- 
tic ? Ho. It is because man believes in spirituality, and 
believes in it because it is a reality, that he erects tombs. 


152 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


‘‘A graveyard, my friend, is an eloquent protest 
against the doctrine of materialism, which some wish to 
raise to the dignity of a new ciecd destructive of super- 
stition and priestly domination. Hence I love grave- 
yards. He who builds a tomb, and who, at least once 
a year, on a fixed day sanctified by religion, brings to 
that tomb the tribute of his sorrow, or remembrance, 
cannot believe that the thick mush which we have in our 
skull and which we call brain, can produce the poetry 
of Homer, the philosophy of Plato, the thoughts of Pas- 
cal, the discoveries of Hewton and the astronomical cal- 
culations of Laplace. Was Moses, that wonderful leg- 
islator wLo made of the Jews an imperishable nation, 
nothing but a lump of matter? Could Christianity, 
which crucifies matter, have been invented by it? 
Could the effect be at war with the cause? Could 
what proceeds from a cause be entirely and essentially 
different from it ? Could darkness emanate from light, 
or light from darkn-ess ? Could matter, even supposing 
it gifted with the power of creation, or invention, have 
produced anything so repugnant to itself as the Gospel ? 
Could matter conceive and proclaim the apotheosis of 
the spiritual? Would matter have brought out of its 
womb a Jesus Christ, by virtue of the same physical 
and gradual transmutations through which it hardened 
itself into a piece of granite ? How could matter act in 
a manner thoroughly inconsistent with its own essence, 
and with the laws which regulate its own existence ? 
If those laws. exist, as they undoubtedly do, did matter 
establish them? Ho. There is, therefore, something 
more potent than matter, something which mixes itself 
with it and operates on it. It is what we call spiritu- 
ality, something which, issuing from the bosom of God, 
pervades the universe, and shows itself resplendent in 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


153 


man, sliining in him as beantifnl as a light in an alabas- 
ter lamp. It is because there is a God, because there 
is spirituality, because there is immortality of the soul, 
because we know these truths from instinct, that there 
are graveyards, and believe me, sir, a graveyard is the 
best of schools for theology, philosophy and morality. 
There is not a tomb here whicli does not convey to me 
a lesson. 

“ Look at this one, for instance. It is the sepulchre 
of one who died very young. She was beautiful and 
rich, and, as one would have supposed, destined to a 
life of happiness. She lived in a distant parish of the 
State. A young man from Hew Orleans Jiad won her 
heart. He was worthy of her, but the girl’s mother had 
another match in view. She wanted no Catholic for her 
son-in-law, and she used all the authority of a mother 
and the arts of a woman to prevent the intended mar- 
riage. But that daughter was of age and had a will of 
her own. The day for her marriage ceremony was fixed, 
and the wedding presents had been made. On the eve 
of that day, Arthur Sidney (let that be the name of the 
bridegroom) called as usual on his intended bride. 
■When he knocked at the door, a note was lianded to 
him by a servant. That note informed him that the 
marriage could not take place, and that he must cease 
all relations with the family into which he was going to 
enter through a sacred alliance. When he reached his 
home, he found that the marriage presents which he 
had made had been returned. He sent two friends to 
inquire into the cause of this extraordinary proceeding. 
The mother of the young lady, whom I shall call Eve- 
lina, received them with freezing coldness, and, in the 
presence of her daughter who remained silent and look- 
ed in her pallor like a statue of marble, told them that 
7 ^ 


154 


FERNANDO DE LEA/OS. 


there were sufficient and satisfactory reasons, with the 
consent and approbation of her daughter, to renounce 
the projected marriage, but that she was bound in hon- 
or not to divulge them. Two weeks afterward, Eve- 
lina was married to the man who was the choice of her 
mother. He was a Protestant and the son of a bishop. 
I shall call him Waverley. Before the year was out, 
Mrs. Waverley had become a Catholic ; she had died and 
had been buried here. 

Shortly after, Arthur Sidney received this anony- 
mous note : ‘ If I inform you of what broke your marriage 
with her over whom the tomb has now closed, will you 
send a check of one thousand dollars to box 2312 in the 
post-office?’ The prompt and short answer was the 
sending of the sum required. The next day, another 
communication came to Arthur Sidney. It ran as fol- 
lows ; 

“ ^ When a very young man, you had a natural son, 
who assumed your name of Arthur Sidney — -a fact of 
which only very few were aware. That natural son 
was, on a certain occasion, as you well know, brought 
before one of the Recorders of Hew Orleans for having 
created a disturbance in a house of ill-fame, and was 
fined ten dollars. Your rival, acting in concert with 
the mother of Evelina, took a certified copy of that 
judgment and with it blasted your character, by pre- 
senting it as having been given against you. Ask the 

Recorder’s clerk, whether on the day of , he 

did not give the certified copy to which I refer. 
Distracted with grief, Evelina became an automaton in 
her mother’s hands, and married as that mother desired. 
Hot long after her marriage, she accidentally knew the 
truth. It killed her. How could it be otherwise ? She 
had wronged the object of her love, lost him forever. 


FEI^NANDO DE LEMOS. 


155 


and discovered that her husband and her mother had 
committed an atrocious crime. In her heart she re- 
nounced them. She wrote you a letter which was in- 
tercepted, and in which she begged your pardon ; and 
shortly after was conveyed to the grave where she re- 
poses.’ 

W ith this letter in his quivering hand, Arthur Sid- 
ney stood before his illegitimate offspring : ‘ Head this, 

sir, and see what you have done. I begged you long 
ago, for obvious reasons, to call yourself, as you might 
be pleased, Stephen, deorge, or Peter Sidney, or by 
whatever other appellation you might prefer, but by all 
means to avoid this confusion of name. It was your 
pride, regardless of consequences to me, to assume the 
name of Arthur Sidney. It flattered your vanity. Be- 
sides, you seemed to take a malicious pleasure in annoy- 
ing me and in proclaiming to the world, as much as in 
your power lay, the youthful error of which I had been 
guilty. Hay, more, you loved to pass yourself oflf for 
me, and, as such, to frequent low places and make 
dupes. In this way many of your delinquencies were 
laid at my door, and more than one of your promissory 
notes, which had been taken under the false impression 
that they were mine, were presented to me as the sup- 
posed drawer. All my remonstrances you have treat- 
ed with mockery and insolence. You now see the cruel 
consequence of what you have done. What have you 
to say ?’ 

‘ I have nothing to say,’ ]-eplied the unabashed youth. 

‘ I don’t see why you take me to task for what has hap- 
pened. It is no fault of mine. Why did the girl make 
a fool of herself ? She ought not to have been so squeam- 
ish about you, and turned you off for a mere trifle. Hon- 
sense ! If you want to scold any body, go to her gen- 


156 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


tie mother and to her virtuous and disconsolate hus- 
band,’ and he grinned a sardonic smile. 

‘^‘Wretch!’ exclaimed Sidney. ‘This is the last 
time that we meet. I suspected you to be a monster ; now 
I have the proof of it. God has severely punished me 
for one of the follies of my youth. May He punish 
you in your turn as you deserve ! You claim me as 
your father. I hope that we have been both deceived 
as to the relations which exist between us. Be that as 
it may ; if I am your father, then may a father’s curse 
rest on your head !’ 

“ This was the last interview between father and son. 
One morning I came to the cemetery very early ; day 
was just breaking. Indisposition had prevented me 
from visiting the tomb during the night as usual. In 
my stroll of inspection I passed by the grave of Evelina. 
What was my astonishment ! A man was stretched on 
it at full length. I approached. O wonder ! He had 
been strangled. The rope was round his neck, and on 
his breast was pinned this inscription : Justice done to 
the felon. It was the body of Waverley.” 

Tintin hung down his head and was silent. He 
evidently was moved. “Was there ever any clue,’’ I 
said, “ to discover the author of this deed ?” 

“ Hot any,” he replied ; “ but, since that event, 
Arthur Sidney never was seen in this country. What 
became of him, I do not know. There came a rumor 
in the course of years, that he had fought his way to a 
high post under the British government in the East 
Indies. It is probable that he still lives, for on the 
annual festival in commemoration of the dead, this 
tomb never fails to be highly decorated. I interrogated 
the man who does it. He answered that lie was paid for 
his work, every year, by the British consul, and that it 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


157 


was all that he knew. The moral of this story is : beware 
of having bastards. It is a sin, and sin has a scorpion 
tail with which, in the end, it stings to death its parent.” 

We w'ere suddenly overtaken by a thunder storm. 
We took refuge under the portico of a Gothic sepul- 
chral chapel, which was a superb monument erected by 
a Spaniard to his wife. The darkness became intense, 
the rain descended in torrents, peals after peals of our 
niagnificent Southern thunder came thick upon each 
other, and the lightning seemed to leap from tomb to 
tomb, which it fitfully illuminated. At each fiash I 
gazed round, and almost expected to see some strange 
and supernatural sight. Tintin Calandro guessed at 
the undefinable feeling of awe which had crept over 
me, for he said : 

“ You will not see any spirit abroad in such weather 
as this, except for some powerful cause. Disembodied 
spirits are as luxurious as when in the flesh. Tliey are 
all at home now, enjoying themselves in their snug 
small houses. They listen with delight to the hubbnb 
of the elements, to this roaring wind and bespattering 
rain. Each one rakes up his dry bones, hugs himself in 
his shelter, stretches his skeleton limbs with a keen 
sense of the enjoyment of complete repose, like an 
epicurean in his soft and rose-perfumed bed, and, rub- 
bing his bony hands, says to himself : how comfortable 
I ami ! Let me sleep — this is the weather to sleep. 
Pit, pat, pit, pat, comes down the rain on our nice and 
tight roof. How sweet ! Go it, rain, and thou, O 
wind, crack thy jaws ! Fire all thy guns, and throw 
out all thy bomb-shells, O thunder ! And thou, light- 
ning, shoot forth thy forked tongue like the arrow of 
Jehovah ! We enjoy our repose the more from its con- 
trast with this war of the elements. 


158 


FEI^NANDO DE LEMOS. 


You see, my friend,” continued Tin tin Calandro, 

the dead still live after their own way. In such a 
night as this they relish their beds as much as you do. 
They also, like us, love to pull the coverlets over their 
nakedness, and to doze away. Ho bills to pay to-mor- 
row ! Ho illusions to lose 1 Ho treachery to counter- 
act! Ho disappointments to encounter! Ho brains 
racked! Ho heart bleeding! Ho tears shed! The 
battle of life has been fought ; their cares are ovei*. 
Hun-ah ! What a luxury to be dead ! Ho more forced 
attention to any of the wants of earthly existence ! 
Hurrah !” 

This wild enthusiasm for death was expressed in a 
manner to which no description can do justice. Whilst 
he spoke, the thunder roared with increased fury, the 
lightning flashed more vividly, and the mad wind, 
grasping the floods of rain as they poured down from 
above, dashed them upon the roof of our white marble 
sepulchre, and swept over it with hurricane-like vio- 
lence. Tintin Calandro, whose personal peculiarities I 
have already described, and who, on every-day occa- 
sions, had so much of the fantastic and elflsh in his ap- 
pearance, looked now, when seen by the lurid light of 
the evanescent flashes of electricity which made him 
only visible by fits and starts, so unearthly and weird- 
like, that I felt a creeping of the flesh as if there stood 
near me something supernatural. After he had delivered 
himself as I have related, bending his head and bury- 
ing his face in his hands, he remained silent so long, that 
I thought he had gone to slee23.. Feeling a sensation of 
cold, I wrapped my cloak round my body in tighter 
folds, and retreated further back under the portico. 
Suddenly he started up. 

Are you not tired of this storm he said. It is 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


159 


magnificent, to be sure, but there may be too mucli of a 
good tiling. To escape from it, I have been trying a diver- 
sion in my own mind, and I have been tliinking iiow 
glorious my cemetery looks by moonlight. There is 
nothing then equal to it. Don’t you agree with me, 
my friend? You have witnessed it yourself. Wiiat 
a scene worthy of the angels ! It is when my cemetery 
is but one sea of serene light, that I love to perform on 
my violin for the dead. When 1 begin, I see at first a land 
of haze or vapor settling on each tomb. Then shadowy 
forms glide upward through brick, marble, or granite, 
and an immense assembly gathers for my concert. 
Some stand up, some sit down, others recline on their 
tombs as on sofas. The little children, how daintily 
they look ! God bless them ! Sometimes they dance 
before me, moving their tiny feet in harmony with my 
music. When they are tired, they trip up to me, 
they courtesy, they kiss their fairy hands to me, and 
thank me so prettily, that, to please them, I could play 
the whole night. They sing in a chorus : ‘ good-night, 
Tintin Calandro, good-night, dear Tintin Calandro,’ 
and they vanish. If you could only see such a sight, 
you would like to dwell for ever in my cemetery.” 

“ Tintin Calandro,” said I, not appearing to notice 
these exhibitions of insanity to which I had become ac- 
customed, and speaking with apparent earnestness as 
if I shared his convictions, I should like to possess like 
you the faculty of seeing the dead and all the wonders 
which you have witnessed.” 

“You may one day have that faculty,” he replied. 
“ It is, however, an invaluable privilege which it is not 
easy to obtain. You will have to do all that is 're- 
quired to arrive at its possession. You must spiritual- 
ize yourself ; you must renounce all the appetites of the 
fiesh, and satisfy them only so far as is indispensable to 


160 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


keep soul and body together. In that physical and 
spiriti..al union and partnership to which we are tem- 
porarily subjected here for purposes beyond the depth of 
our shallow comprehension, let the soul have the best 
part of the bargain, and grant to it, as far as possible, the 
monopoly of your existence. Eeduce your body to the 
having of merely a pittance out of the inheritance to 
which you were born as the child of God. Give it but 
mere crumbs out of that banquet of life during which 
poisonous drugs are so often mixed up with the rich 
wines that sparkle in our cups, and devils, in the livery 
of menial fidelity and devotion, stand behind our chairs 
with obsequious deference, and with tempting dishes 
from which we are in vain warned to abstain by our 
guardian angels. Hever forget, friend of mine, that 
you are a compound of matter and spirit, and that mat- 
ter is a screen between the spiritual world and that 
soul or spirit which dwells in you. Therefore purify 
and thin off that matter, so as to make it of crystal 
transparenc3^ Then your soul wiU look through it as 
through a glass, and will be enabled to have communi- 
cation with congenial essences. But the flesh must 
first be subjugated, and this can only be done by vol- 
untary privations, by incessant macerations, by prayer, 
and particularly by the discipline of secret and nobly 
supported sorrows, resulting in a deep-seated abhor- 
rence of earthly pleasures. When you are thus schooled 
and thoroughly prepared, let your mind gather up its 
loins and depart from that domain of the material world 
to which it had d-evoted but too much attention. Fix 
your thoughts intently on the dead and the spiritual. 
Come then, if you like, to the tomb that contains the 
mortal remains of the disembodied spirit which has not 
as }^et perished in your memory. Do it day after day, 
and for consecutive hours. Call that spirit to you with 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


161 


that power and strength of will which magnetically 
commands obedience, and with that faith which re- 
moves mountains. Evoke that beloved spirit, I say, 
hardly without interruption, and with that importunity 
which, we are scripturally told, will not meet with re- 
fusal, and probably you will be heard and gratified. I 
am almost sure that you will one day feel, that a mysti- 
cal correspondence has been established between you 
and the departed. You will see, through the very 
walls of the tomb, the bod}^ which reposes there, and 
you will see it just in the same condition in which it 
was deposited on the day of its burial, although, were 
that tomb opened to coarse and vulgar vision, it would 
show nothing but disgusting decay, and perhaps noth- 
ing but dust. O, the wonders of the grave ! If you 
could understand the language of the dead and appre- 
ciate their society, you would never leave my cemetery 
to go back to the bustling and deceiving world, which 
is nothing but a pack of damnable lies and tormenting 
illusions, sprinkled over with a modicum of hardly per- 
ceptible truths and half rotten morality. Hever would 
you abandon the tranquillity of this place, where there 
is so much consolation and true knowledge — that knowl- 
edge which comes from heaven, and not from hell. 
Ha ! ha ! ha ! Better consort with the dead than with 
the living. Tintin Calandro has long ago made that 
discovery. But it is late, and the storm has almost 
ceased ; let us go, to seek oblivion in sleep, which is 
the sweet anticipation, forerunner and foretaste of 
death, and the object of which, I suppose, is to prepare 
us for that final sleep on earth which will herald us to 
sleepless and eternal felicity in the bosom of God, or to 
just and condign punishment under the inevitable judg- 
ment of the liege Lord of the wicked and the good.” 


CHAPTEK XV. 


WHICH FERIiTANDO AISTD TINTIN CAHANDRO RELATE TO 
EACH OTHER MANY INTERESTING THINGS. 

Once, contrary to my liabit, I entered the cemetery 
during the day. The snn, however, was disappearing 
behind the western horizon. I saw Tintin Calandro. 
He was leaning on a tomb, his back turned to me. I 
approached him without his being aware of it, and 
touched him on the shoulder. When he faced me, I 
observed that his eyes were full of tears. “ What is 
the matter f ’ said I. 

Twin sisters,” he replied, “ five years old, were put 
in this tomb this morning. The mother has just been 
visiting this last resting-place of her children. Oh! 
How she kissed the cold marble 1 How she wept ! 
How she prayed 1 What pathos there is in a mother’s 
agony of sorrow ! I have never been able to witness it 
without being overpowered by sympathetic grief. She 
did not see me ; for I was hidden behind that monu- 
ment yonder. I longed to come up and tell her : ‘ Do 
not weep ; your children are not dead. They are 
hovering above your head at this very moment, and 
are crying also like yourself, because of your sorrow.’ 
But I said to myself : > she will think that I am mad.’ 
All the while, the two little girls, invisible to her, 
were wringing their hands in despair because of the 
sobs and tears of their mother, and trying in vain to 
( 162 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


163 


make her aware of their presence. The scene was be- 
coming intensely painful to me, when suddenly two 
baby angels, with wings as white as a swan’s feathers, 
came down from heaven, and, throwing their pretty 
arms round the necks of the children, said to them : 
‘ sisters, be comforted. Come up with us. We will 
show you the wonders of our celestial home and of your 
future one. Be not uneasy about your mother. It is 
our mission to console her, and, to-night, we shall ap- 
pear to her in a vision and bring her cheerful tidings 
of her loved ones.’ And they aU ascended together 
and were soon lost to my sight.” 

Wliat strange insanity ! said I to myself. But, since 
it makes him happy, why should I attempt to shake 
his belief in the reality of what to me is but the hallu- 
cination of a diseased brain? Whilst this reflection 
was presenting itself to me, I had taken notice of an- 
other fresh grave near the one of the twin sisters. 
“Well, Tintin Calandro,” said I, “no angel of light, 
I suppose, will approach what remains of him who has 
been deposited there to-day,” pointing out the tomb, 
“ for he has left behind him almost a dishonored 
name.” 

“ Don’t be so sure of that,” he rephed. “ This man, 
it is true, had vices, and did things which he had bet- 
ter have left undone. But human nature is a strange 
compound, and this weak and erring specimen of mor- 
tality was better than he had credit for. Poor sinful 
Joubert, who is now within the hearing of my voice, 
I will vindicate your character, at least to some extent.” 
Then turning round to me, and fixing his luminous eyes 
on mine, he continued in these words : 

“ You know some of the bad deeds of Joubert ; let 
me relate to you some of the good ones, for the dead 


164 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


have no secrets for me. One day Joubert was on a 
steamboat crossing Lake Pontchartrain. One of the 
passengers, whom he had reasons to believe his enemy, 
fell overboard. He threw himself into the angry 
waves, for it was stormy, and saved the drowning man 
at the great risk of losing his own hfe. What do yon 
think of that ? Ha ! ha ! j^nd yet every body nsed to 
call him a scamp, and a scamp he was in some respects. 

“ Many years ago he had been the boon companion 
of a rich young man, whom, with other parasites, he 
had helped to ruin himself. A bankrupt in fortune 
and in health the spendthrift died, leaving a widow 
and a daughter. Shortly after, wealth was bequeathed 
to that widow by a distant relation, and she married 
again. Much time had elajosed, when it happened that 
Joubert called on that second husband. 

“ ^ Sir,’ said he to him, ‘ have you not found among 
the papers of your wife a promissory note for two 
thousand dollars, which I drew in favor of her husband 
more than fifteen years ago V 

‘‘ ‘ Yes,’ replied the gentleman. ‘ I remember hav- 
ing seen it, although I must confess that I never thought 
it deserved much attention, as I always considered it 
a worthless piece of paper on account of your absolute 
want of means. Besides, the debt is prescribed.’ 

‘‘ ^ Look for it, however,’ said Joubert, ‘ for I will 
pay it to-morrow at twelve o’clock, out of a small sum 
which I have recently inherited.’ 

“ He was punctual, and true to his word. The 
promissory note was redeemed with the payment in 
full, not only of the capital, but also of the interest 
accrued during fifteen years. Ha ! ha !” continued 
Tintin, raising his voice to a higher key, what do you 
think now of the scamp ? 


FERNAiVDO DE LEMOS. 


165 


“ Once there was an execution issued against a 
Spaniard living in Conde street. The sheriff was in 
the room, seizing and inventorying the scanty furniture 
of that poor foreigner wliom nobody knew, or cared 
for. A few persons whom curiosity had attracted 
were looking on, and could not but admire his stoical 
indifference. His face might be thought a little paler 
than usual. That was the only external indication, 
slight as it was, of what feelings might be working 
within. Having completed his inventory, the sheriff 
was preparing to withdraw, when he discovered a min- 
iature painting hanging on the wall near a window and 
nearly concealed by the folds of a tattered curtain. 
The officer of the law advanced to lay his hands on it, 
when the hitherto self-possessed Spaniard bounded like a 
tiger, and, planting himself between the officer and the 
portrait, said in a tremulous voice : ‘ Must this be taken 
also ?’ 

‘ Yes,’ was the reply. 

‘ Then,’ exclaimed the Spaniard, drawing a dagger 
from his breast, and looking as if he defied heaven 
and earth, ‘ it shall be at the peril of your life and 
mine.’ 

“ At that critical moment, one of the spectators of 
that scene whispered these words into the sheriff’s ear : 
‘ How much is the whole debt V 

‘ One hundred and fifty dollars,’ was the^answer. 

“ ^ I will pay them, on condition you tell that man 
that his creditor, on hearing of his poverty, has relented 
and withdrawn the execution.’ 

It was finally settled on those terms, and the Span- 
iard kept the miniature he valued so much, without 
ever knowing to whom he was indebted for it. The 
individual who thus interfered in favor of that poor 


166 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


unknown stranger, had at the time only three hundred 
dollars at his command. That was his whole fortune. 
He divided it, as you see, into two parts, and in the 
way I have mentioned. Who was that man ? Joubert ! 
And now, what think you of the scamp 

This time Tintin almost shouted the question which 
he had thus been pleased to repeat thrice in the course 
of this story. I looked at the tomb, and reverently 
took off my hat. Well done,” said he, and Jou- 
bert’s spirit is deeply moved at this demonstration of 
respect to his memory — the more so, because, on a cer- 
tain occasion, you were very near flying at each other’s 
throats. But now you are both reconciled. A tomb, 
as yon see, is an excellent mediator, and charity covers 
many sins.” 

In our walk we came near that part of the cemetery 
where the wall is from six to eight feet thick, and 
honeycombed into graves where are put the bodies of 
those who are too poor to have any thing better. On 
the stone slab which closed one of these pigeon-holes I 
read the name of Henry O’Heil, although the letters 
were almost half effaced. It put me in mind of for- 
mer days. O’Heil was an Irishman by birth and the 
nephew of a Catholic bishop of that name, who had 
acquired in Ireland some celebrity and possessed great 
influence. He had been educated at a college of Jes- 
uits in France. Coming to Hew York to better his 
fortune, he had been a private teacher in one of the 
oldest families of that city. With excellent letters of 
introduction he had subsequently repaired to Hew Or- 
leans, where he continued to give lessons. Being an 
accomplished scholar and versed in several languages, 
he was advised to study law and enter the bar, where 
his talents would have secured him a high position and 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS, 


167 


golden harvests. But the demon of dissipation had 
got hold of him. Instead of studying the civil code and 
qualifying himself for the practice of an honorable 
profession, for which he seemed eminently fitted, he 
plunged into all kinds of excesses. He associated with 
none but the wildest young men of the city, and be- 
coming 

A sorry wight, 

He vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of night. 

O’Heil was immensely superior to his boon compani- 
ons, on whom he exercised a sort of fascination, from 
which, although I was not one of that set, I had not 
altogether escaped myself ; for sometimes I imprudent- 
ly joined in the frolics of that madcap and scapegrace 
crew, merely to enjoy the society of O’Heil. I can 
fancy that I still see him seated at the banqueting table 
of revelry, with lips curving with contempt for his 
giddy and shallow-pated associates, and, as it was evi- 
dent to me, scorning himself for the life he led. Once 
I told him so, and he gave me no denial. Was the 
man under the irresistible influence of some unaccount- 
able spell? Are there human beings doomed to pursue 
an unavoidable career of folly and vice, when appar- 
ently born to a better and higher one, and compelled 
by some malignant demon to keep .splashing in the 
sewers of society, when they have wings to soar to its 
alpine summit, and there light up those beacon fires 
which would be signals by which others would be en- 
couraged, and guided in that march of progressive im- 
provement to which man is believed to be destined ? 
Why had O’Heil thus been gifted in vain and to no 
purpose ? How came he to be afflicted with a madness 
which destroyed his excellencies? Was he providen- 


168 FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 

tially intended only as a warning to others ? But who 
ever profited by such warnings ? Be it as it may, he 
was a puzzle to me. The eagle had stooped from the 
empyrean vault, to associate fraternally with stinking 
buzzards and to fatten on the same carrion. This 
O’lSTeil of mine affected to be an empty-headed dandy, 
forsooth ! He, that vast repository of knowledge — ^lie, 
on whom nature had conferred the mighty gift of elo- 
quence, with which he loved occasionally to grasp any 
subject which the caprice of the hour presented to his 
pleased fancy amidst the confusion and uproar of bac- 
chanalian orgies. O’Neil’s eloquence did not gush out 
impetuously like a mountain torrent, but moved quiet- 
ly onward like the almost insensible heaving up of some 
vast but lazy tide of the Pacific Ocean. He spoke 
very slowly and deliberately. He dwelt on every word, 
which, after all, was no idle and empty word, but had 
sufficient substance to he dwelt upon. Whilst he rolled 
out every sentence with distinct emphasis, he always 
pointed at you with his index, as if, with it, he intended 
to push through your brain and heart everything he 
said. He had a trick, when speaking, of gravely shak- 
ing his perfumed locks, and fixing steadily on you eyes 
which struck you as being of unfathomable depth, and 
which, as you gazed at them, seemed to grow deeper 
and deeper. Much as I admired the genius of the man, 
there was something in him which was very repulsive 
to me. It was the eternal sneering smile which played 
on his lips, and the peculiarly diabolical dry chuckling 
with which he always closed some of his grand tirades. He 
had also an ill-natured habit which did not raise him in 
my estimation, but which, I confess, afforded me some- 
times a good deal of amusement. Whenever he was 
displeased with some presumption on the part of one 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


169 


of his companions in profligacy, he would watch for an 
opportunity, and, lifting up his ponderous intellectual 
club, did not scruple to belabor without mercy the poor 
fellow, and gave him no respite until he saw him 
thoroughly humbled, and ready to admit himself to be 
the greatest ass that ever brayed in this world ! 

I will relate two anecdotes which will give some 
further insight into O’^Teil’s character. He and a young 
Frenchman called Melville, were courting an interest- 
ing widow. Having met at one of her parties, in the 
course of the evening they happened to be seated, one 
on the right, and the other on the left, of the fair host- 
ess. It was not long before the two rivals began 
talking at each other in a sly and indirect manner. 
The lady was amused. It stimulated the two champi- 
ons and carpet knights in their encounter of wits. But 
Melville was no match for O’Heil, Avho, in the use of 
polished but withering sarcasm, and in the terrible art 
of blasting with ridicule every thing he chose, possessed 
a Yoltairian skill. His keen and bright Damascus blade 
incessantly plunged through the defenceless breast of 
his adversary, until the impetuous Frenchman, stung 
into litter disregard of what was due to himself and 
to others, so far forgot all propriety as to slap his rival’s 
face. It was a slap given with a right good will, for it 
resounded throughout the vast rooms. Dancing and 
the music stopped instantly, and we looked anxiously 
toward the fatal spot. O’Heil had not changed color ; 
he had remained seated, perfectly composed and un- 
ruflled, and retaining stereotyped on his lips the same 
smile with which he had been addressing the lady, 
when struck. But impressively shaking his index as 
was his wont, and almost touching the Frenchman’s 
breast with it, he drawled out these words : I will kill 
8 


170 


FEJiNANDO DE LEMOS. 


you to-morrow,” and, turning away from him, resumed, 
as if nothing had happened, the conversation in which 
he had been engaged, whilst his discomfited antagonist 
apologized to the lady for his unfortunate vivacity, and 
retired. What self-control ! It was sublime. We all 
felt it to be such. The next morning they met. O’Heil 
was dressed as for a ball, and in exquisitely varnished 
patent leather pumps. His glossy and perfumed hair 
was artistically arranged into ringlets, and he held in 
his hand a delicately scented cambric handkerchief 
edged with lace, which he now and then passed over 
his face. His eternal smile was on his lips, but this 
time its expression was so cynical and mischievous that 
it made my blood run cold. At the first fire, Melville 
fell to rise no more. O’Heil’s ball had gone through 
his heart ; as to Melville’s, it had only grazed O’Heil’s 
left temple and cut olf one of his curls. He picked it 
up, and put it carefully in a neat little pocket-book 
which he drew out of his coat, saying : ‘‘ Hicely clip- 
ped for my lady-love.” 

On another occasion, I was with O’Heil at a place of 
public resort. One of the notorious duellists of the day, 
and they were numerous at that epoch, for it was the 
fashion to be one, came up to us, evidently with the in- 
tention of picking a quarrel with him, and used offen- 
sive language. “ Bah !” said O’Heil, with the utmost 
good humor, “ I see what you are driving at. You 
desire a duel with me to show what nerves you have. 
But allow me to say to you that you behave very stu- 
pidly, and very unjustly to me. Your hair-brained 
courage is very well known. Hence, my good friend, 
it is absurd, you will confess, to attempt to demonstrate 
what is universally admitted. You may, however, be 
as foolish as you please, if you like the indulgence, 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


171 


whenever your foolishness does not affect others. But, 
in this present circumstance, why should you act so un- 
fairly toward me, against whom you can entertain no 
well-foimded grudge, for I have always treated you 
with uniform courtesy and even cordiality ? Why, I say, 
should you be so unjust as to compel me to kill you, 
wliich I will infalliby do, if I cannot honorably escape 
from that dire necessity ? I think that you are an ex- 
cellent hearted fellow after all, although you sometimes 
choose to demean yourself as if your brains were in 
your heels, instead of being in the proper place. There- 
fore it would be very disagreeable to me to put you out 
of this world, if I cannot put some sense in that shallow 
pate of yours and he patted it familiarly and almost 
affectionately, to the utmost confusion and bewilder- 
ment of the professed duellist, who growled between 
his teeth like a subdued mastiff*, willing but afraid to 
bite, and who, having lost all presence of mind, did not 
know exactly what to do. I was greatly amused. O’j^eil 
went on remonstrating, half in earnest and half in jest, 
on the preposterousness of a duel without a cause, and 
so worked on the feelings of his would-be adversary, 
that the pugnacious animal apologized to him. “ That 
is well,” continued O’lTeil with the kindest intonations 
of voice. ‘‘ I knew there is something good in you, and 
that you are not the absolute fool you chose to repre- 
sent yourself to be. Now let us all take a drink like 
loving friends.” And to the bar they went, O’Neil 
leading the tamed tiger, and smiling his peculiar sar- 
donic smile. The whole thing was exquisitely done, 
and must have been seen to.be fully appreciated. 

Will you believe that a man so gifted, did, in the 
end, destroy himself with brandy, not on occasions of 
conviviality, but in the solitude of his own chamber % 


172 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


At my own house he would take a bottle of Cognac 
which he would divide into two equal parts, and pour 
into two small crystal decanters. They were placed by 
him at both ends of my oblong library room, as far re- 
moved from each other as possible. He called them the 
Horth and South Poles, and would, for consecutive 
hours, pace in silence from one decanter to the other, 
out of which he helped himself alternately, until not a 
drop was left of the fiery liquid. Strange to say, he 
never showed the slightest sign of intoxication. His 
tongue only would seem a little thicker, but his mind 
was as clear as ever. I had made frequent remon- 
strances against that suicidal course, but friendly as they 
were, they had always been received with a cynical levity 
which at last disgusted me, and I closed my lips. Hav- 
ing absented myself for three years, a note from O’Heil 
was handed to me shortly after my return, requesting 
me to call on him without loss of time, for he was dy- 
ing. I immediately complied with his desire, and found 
him, on the outskirts of the city, in a miserable room 
bare of every thing save a greasy mattress on which he 
was stretched, and an empty bottle on the fioor within 
his reach. When I appeared, conscious, I suppose, of 
the contrast which must have struck me between the 
once brilliant dandy scholar and the alcoholic skeleton 
before my eyes, he quoted the exclamation which Yir- 
gil puts in the mouth of Eneas when relating to Dido 
the apparition of the ghost of Hector : quantum muta- 
tus ah illo ! How changed from what he was !” A 
chang6 indeed ! For this Hector, this prince of the in- 
tellect, was reduced to a mere shadow of his former 
self. He thanked me with a husky voice for my pres- 
ence at the last closing scene of his life, and his mind 
soon wandered into the ravings of delirious imbecility, 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


173 


until deatli brought relief to him and to me. I have, 
ever since, not unfrequently thought of O’J^eil, and I 
have wondered how such a man could have been an 
atheist and a drunkard. 

“ Perhaps,” said Tintin Calandro, “ he was a drunk- 
ard because he was an atheist, or professed to be one, 
and an atheist because he was born with the innate 
beastly propensities of a drunkard. But do you know, 
my friend, that I have always doubted that there ever 
existed a human being, with his intellectual faculties 
not actually deranged, who ever denied to himself and 
in his heart the existence of Grod ? To profess atheism 
IS nothing but bravado, and the insolence of an intellec- 
tual pride seeking to put itself above the level of what 
is called the vulgar credulity of mankind.” 

“O’J^eil,” I replied, pretended to be in earnest, 
and I believe he was.” 

“ Pshaw ! nonsense. "What did he say in support of 
his assertion that there was no God ?” 

JS’othing new. He repeated arguments as old as 
the deluge — only the rags of ancient and modern skep- 
ticism and infidelity re-washed, re-ironed, and made 
smooth to help their circulation in the market.” 

‘‘ A poor compliment to the intellect you valued so 
much in your departed friend,” said Tintin. 

“ This was not due,” I answered, to any deficiency 
of intellect, but to the weakness of the cause which his 
intellect, large as it was, undertook to advocate. Strong 
eyes may squint ; thus his mental vision squinted when 
directed to that subject. He was mad when he thought 
there was no God, just as thoroughly mad a man is, who 
thinks himself to be God ; and let me tell you that the 
most extraordinary man I ever met, was one who was 
afflicted with that infirmity. He was confined in a 


174 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


Quaker lunatic asylum in Philadelphia, and he was as 
sane as any of his race, and more sapient than the im- 
mense majority of it, save on one point — he believed 
himself Grod. And now I will give you, as well as I 
can, a general view of what O’l^eil used to say ^vdien 
our conversation took a metaphysical turn.” 


CHAPTER XVL 

O’NEIIi THE ATHEIST. 

“ I WILL not,” said O’JSTeil to me, “ examine all the dis- 
quisitions more or less fanciful of ancient and modem 
philosophers about simple, and compound or composite 
matter — matter purely material, or mixed with some- 
thing apparently immaterial — matter self-existing from 
all eternity and self-sufficient, and matter created, obey- 
ing certain laws issuing from a source foreign to itself 
and perfectly inexplicable — matter not God, and matter 
God. Those learned men never understood themselves, 
and the more I have studied their various propositions 
and conjectures, for I will not honor their pretended ex- 
poundings of the truth with any other name, the more 
bewildered I have become, like every body else, I pre- 
sume, who attempted to be enlightened by their teach- 
ings, and who only found that they made darkness still 
darker. I believe in matter and in matter alone, because 
I see it, whatever its nature may be, unknown or known 
to me in all its elements and properties ; and I do not puz- 
zle myself with what may possibly exist beyond the range 
of my physical and intellectual vision, because I know 
beforehand that I could not establish any rational belief 
on what is imaginary. I believe simply in matter and in 
the laws which govern it, because I discover those laws in 
pai’t, or in whole. Matter does not present itself to me as 

( 175 ) 


176 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


an article of faith. I am to accept its existence only so far 
as it is demonstrated to my senses. It does not expect 
me to abdicate my reason at the foot of its throne. I 
am not called upon to recognize in it any right of 
dominion over me ; or if it should chance that I find 
myself liable to submit to its action on me against my 
will, I may, in my turn, be able to operate and re-act 
on it with ten times more power and efiicacy. It makes 
me feel that I am something in the material w^orld, of 
which I am a part. 

But when we come to what is called the immaterial, 

I find myself in a vacuum, where there is no substance 
and where nothing exists which I can conceive. What 
is God ? It is said to be the Supreme Being, the eter- 
nal, infinite and omnipotent Spirit, the Creator and the 
Sovereign of the universe. These are high-sounding 
words, but they convey nothing precise to my under- 
standing, no rational comprehension or appreciation 
of that invisible, bodiless and mystic Being, residing in 
the infiniteness of space, and generating matter out of 
nothingness at his will and pleasure. But if the elements 
of matter did not exist at the time of its formation into 
what it is now, whence did it come ? If God alone 
existed previous to the beginning of the universe, mat- 
ter must have come out of Him. Hence it existed in 
Him under some form or other, and if existing in Him ' 
in principle. He must have been material Himself, 
whether in whole or in part, and if not entirely imma- 
terial, then He is not a spirit. Oh, no. This is pro- 
fanation and impiety. God is a pure spirit. Why ? 
How do I, or do you, know it 1 Is it because God has 
never been seen ? But is any thing escaping the detec- 
tion of our senses a spirit ? Iron may be reduced to 
an invisible, intangible gas. But will that gas cease to 


F^J^.YA.VBO DE LEMOS. 1 . 

be matter for all that ? Can we conceive existence with- 
out substance, and what is substance but matter, al- 
though it may be so light as not to be ponderable in hu- 
man scales ? What then is a spirit ? Is it, according 
to unsatisfactory definitions, an immaterial, intelligent 
something, either created, as we are told, like the an- 
gels, or uncreated but self-existing and self-sufficient be- 
fore the commencement of time, like God — a thing 
without a beginning and without an end, not governed 
by imposed laws, but by its own will ? The explanation 
is as vague and obscure as the subject itself. It is a 
shadow holding a dark lantern to show me what is the 
composition of another shadow. Thus the poor human 
mind, like a tread-mill horse, is whipped forever round 
a circle of incomprehensibilities, without advancing an 
inch beyond the ground to which it is confined. 

“ Matter with intelligence I see, and therefore I be- 
lieve in it, although it is full of mysteries. But intel- 
ligence unmixed with matter I have never been able to 
discover, therefore I reject it until better informed. I 
have the right to say to you : show me the immaterial as 
clearly as you show me the material, before you demand 
my acknowledgment of its existence. Besides, if God 
is a pure spirit, free from the- alloy of matter in His 
composition, how is it that being created after His own 
image, I am half matter and half spirit? Must I not 
infer, that there is that in Him which must be material 
like one half of myself, if I am His image ? But, leaving 
aside those questions of the eternity of matter, or of 
spirit, in a divided or inseparable existence — questions 
which will never be solved — I maintain that if God is, 
an I if He is omnipotent. He is responsible for the prev- 
alence of evil, which must have come out of Him, or 
must haT e existed independently of Him from the be- 
8 * 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


i7i* 

ginning. If independently of God, what becomes of 
the omnipotence and unity of the ruler of the universe ? 
If evil he under His control, what shall I say of His 
responsibility for its existence ? But evil, which we 
know to be such merely from its connection with crea- 
ted things, must, like all created things, have proceeded 
from the almighty Creator, and not from nothingness. 
Hence if God drew out of Himself all things now in 
existence, including evil. He cannot have been absolute- 
ly and completely good in His essence, since evil co- 
existed in Him. 

“ But it is said that evil came out of the corruption 
of man. Then why was man made susceptible of that 
corruption ? The reply is, that if made otherwise, he 
would not have been man. But why was man made at 
all, when his creation led to the introduction and prev- 
alence of evil? Where was the necessity of it? Could 
such an imperfect work have been fashioned by the 
hands of a perfect and omnipotent being before whom 
the past, the present and the future are but one thing ? 
If I can prevent a murder and do not choose to do so, 
I am morally as much of a murderer as the one who 
did the deed. What sovereign, if it was in his power 
to relieve one single case of distress in his dominions, 
and if he omitted it, would not be blamed for such in- 
difference, supineness, or even cruelty ? Thus God, in 
permitting, no matter for what reason, the existence of 
evil in this world, when he could have done otherwise, 
becomes Himself the author of evil. I know the an- 
swer. He permits evil that good may come out of it. 
But this is the sheerest cant, and worse than cant. 
It would be tracing up to God and deriving from Him 
the immoral maxim that the end justifies the means, 
Omnipot 3nce becoming Jesuitical, and having recourse 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


179 


to evil in order to produce good ! Bah ! What sort of 
God is this ? Surelj He is none for me. I would rath- 
er, with so many millions of the martyrs of life, believe 
in the existence of Ahriman and Ormozd, the two dis- 
tinct and adverse principles of good and evil in Eastern 
theology, which from all eternity have been struggling 
against each other for Supremac3^ But I am told not 
to judge God by the feeble light of my human reason. 
What other means have I to form an opinion of Him ? 
I am also told that the finite cannot grasp the infinite. 
Yery well. If God has thought proper to make Him- 
self an inexplicable enigma to my comprehension, it is 
exactly as if He did not exist at all for me. 

“ But what shall I say, when I look at the fate of 
man as constituting a race or species. Can a benevo- 
lent Deity have created that most miserable of all 
beings ? See what David and Solomon think of human 
life, notwithstanding all their piety and their being the 
favorites of Jehovah. Their lamentations strike terror 
into the heart. We know, on the other hand, what 
view, from the remotest pagan antiquity, man has taken 
of his own condition and destiny in this world. I refer 
you to Homer and the oldest authors. Plato doubted ‘ if‘ 
the gods had created us for some serious design, or 
merely as puppets for their own amusement.’ Sophocles 
proclaims before a Grecian audience, “ that the greatest 
of evils is to be born, and the greatest of blessings is to 
die.’ Pindar said, ‘ that life is nothing but the dream 
of a shadow.’ As to Socrates, whom an grade has pro- 
nounced the wisest of men, he told his disciples ‘ that 
life ought to be nothing else than a meditation on 
death.’ If life is a curse, and this seems to be the uni- 
versal sentiment of the thinking part of mankind, how 
could it have been iiifiicted on us by omnipotent benev- 


180 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


olence? Hence the supposition that we were created 
free from evil, and destined to the enjoyment of eternal 
bliss if we had retained our innocence, but that, on 
account of some crime perpetrated by our first parents, 
we were ejected from^paradise, and doomed to the tor- 
tures resulting from the altered conditions of our primi- 
tive existence. But it God foresaw the guilt of man, 
was it not cruel to create him to be criminal, and to be 
punished in himself and in his descendants ? If He 
had no such foresight, where is that omniscience which 
is the essential attribute of God ? Alas ! Evil pre- 
dominates over good, wickedness over virtue, and suffer- 
ings over enjoyments. Hence there can be no God, at 
least such a God as I am desired or expected to believe 
in. I can very well understand the policy which dicta- 
ted Voltaire’s well-known verse : 

‘ Si Dieu n’ existait pas, il faudrait I’inventer. ’ 

If God did not exist, He would have to be invented — 

which means that, as we are afraid that the public exe- 
cutioner, with rope, ax, and gibbet, may not be sufiicient 
to protect life and property, we need, above, another 
bugbear more dreaded than the officer of the law here 
below. Hence, although Y oltaire, the skeptic, ridiculed 
every sort of religious worship, Yoltaire, the rich man 
and the proprietor of the chateau of Ferney, erected 
within the shadow of his mansion a temple to God, for 
the protection of his broad acres and of his silver 
spoons. 

Few are willing to die, I am told, and therefore life 
is a valuable gift ; otherwise it would not be clung to 
with such tenaciousness. And yet, how few, at sixty, 
when they have the full experience of life, will consent 
to live again on the same conditions, and tread their 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


I8i 

way through the same avenue which has led them 
to the side of the grave! They might be tempted to 
take another road, hoping that it would he lined with 
fewer thorns to tear their flesh, and with a greater 
abundance of flowers and fruits to gladden their senses. 
It would be another illusion, no doubt. For to live, is 
to be hacked and covered with wounds, because life is 
war. The very elements teach us that lesson ; the 
beasts of the field and the birds of the air repeat it to 
us ; in fact the whole of nature is at war with itself. 
This is the spectacle offered to man’s imitation, and 
richly does he better the instruction. For to him belongs 
the pre-eminent distinction of nursing, fostering, caress- 
ing, feeding and fattening dumb animals which lick his 
hands, merely with a view to slaughter them and gorge 
himself with their flesh, until he himself is devoured by 
all sorts of creeping things I Our globe is a vast shambles, 
and man, a gigantic and pitiless butcher. He has no 
mercy for his own race, whdse blood he sheds with in- 
stinctive ferocity whenever it suits his purposes. Gene- 
rations of our species succeed one another like the 
waves of the sea, which, one after one, in rapid succes- 
sion, rush to the distant rocky shore, merely to break 
into spray, and disappear on reaching their destination ; 
or they wither like the leaves of the forest which 
periodically fade and fall year after year. Why should 
we attach more importance to the appearance or dis- 
appearance of those successive crops of flesh and blood 
which our race supplies, according to settled laws, or the 
exigencies of its elemental nature? I see around me 
nothing but the demonstration of a cold and implacable 
self-made system of production and destruction. If I 
am an intelligent being, partly immaterial, and if that 
immaterial part is destined to live for ever in a state of 


182 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


bliss, or suffering, according to my merits or demerits 
in my present existence, I think that I am entitled to a 
clear revelation of the designs of my creator, as to the 
purposes and ultimate object of my creation and as to 
the course which I am to pursue, whilst I am in a state 
of pretended probation. Such is not the case, however. 
I am assured, it is true, with a tone of authority which 
I am almost forbidden to question, that such a revela- 
tion has been made. Where ? I do not find it engraved on 
the face of the earth, or flaming in shining letters on the 
vault of Heaven. I am referred to a book ; but that 
book, like other books, even if it were originally in- 
spired, has been re-copied, re-printed, translated and 
re-translated, and transmitted to us by man; and we 
know that whatever man touches, becomes permeated 
with lies. But, admitting it to be divine revelation, if 
I do not see it in that light, or if I do not understand its 
language, or if its doctrines shock my reason, it is for 
me exactly as if that revelation had not been made. I 
ask a question of vital importance, and I am answered 
in something which is incomprehensible to me. Is it 
an answer? 

“ It is our boast to have over the other animals three 
distinctive features — hope, foresight, and religious apti- 
tude — which, as it 'is pretended, would not have been 
granted to us, if we were destined to perish soul and 
body. But this does not strike me as a logical deduc- 
tion, unless I concede the postulate : that the more we 
suffer, the greater proof we have of our immortality ; 
for it must be admitted that foresight racks us with 
fears, and that hope feeds us with disappointments. 
Wlien it summons a smile to our lips, some sad reality 
presents itself to make our eyes overflow with tears. 
As to our religious aptitude, it is but a propensity to 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


183 


the adoption of debasing superstitions, rather than to 
tlie correct conception of divine laws for our rule, if 
there be any we are called on to discover and to obey. 
I do not see that naan, to-day, is nearer to the acquisi- 
tion of new moral and religious truths than he was four 
thousand years ago. Therefore it is false that he is 
progressive in that spiritual character which is claimed 
for him as his attribute and birthright, and, if he has no 
spiritual career ex2aanding before him as he advances, 
he is nothing but matter, intelligent matter, it is true, 
but, as such, he moves onward only to fall back, after 
having ferreted out some of the secrets of that universal 
world of matter of which he is a component part. I see 
frequently national ignorance gradually rising into a 
vast development of sciences and arts ; and I see civili- 
zation, hke a boundless ocean, swelling up to the sum- 
mit of the highest mountains. But that civilization in- 
variably leads to the lowest depths of corruption. Then 
conies some grand irresistible catastrophe — a deluge — 
wars — pestilence — famine — an avalanche of desolation. 
That society, those laws, those arts, that literature, those 
sciences, that civilization, which it had taken centuries 
to mature and estabhsh on an apparently solid basis, 
are swept away in an instant by some physical convul- 
sions, or by political earthquakes, or by the invasion of 
barbarians. Opaque darkness overspreads the land, 
then a little ray of light beams from some distant -star 
or other, and, by that feeble light, we discover the huge 
human spider again working at its web, which will 
again be swept away, and so on without an end. There 
may be divine benevolence in all tliat ; but it must be 
confessed that a very densp screen exists between our 
imperfect vision and that infinite benevolence. Let 
that screen be withdrawn, let an explanation be given 


184 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


of the horrible mysteries by which we are snrrounded, 
and then if my heart is not filled with due gratitude, 
and my tongue does not teem with the praise of my 
Creator, let me be punished. 

‘‘ The fact is, that the question of the immortality of 
the soul, which is the basis of our relations with the 
Deity, if Deity there is, is such, that, outside of revela- 
tion, it must remain eternally unsolved. It has in vain 
been investigated by the greatest minds of ancient and 
modern times. The arguments for and against its 
probability have been exhausted, and the doubts of 
mankind have remained the same ever since Job com- 
plained of his hard fate, and would not be consoled by 
his loquacious friends. The arguments on both sides 
are so equally balanced before the tribunal of the world, 
that the wisdom of man, in its judicial capacity, has re- 
manded the case for further information and discussion, 
wdiich, if attempted, will produce no better results. 
There are ever-glaring contradictions in the works of 
most of those who have written on the subject, and those 
very contradictions show the absurdity and the useless- 
ness of such investigations. For instance, Cicero ex- 
presses the opinion more than once in his Tusculanes, 
that the soul perishes with the body, whilst he main- 
tains its immortality in his work on the ‘ Nature of the 
gods.’ Nay, in his speech for Cluentius in the senate 
of Rome, he says: MYe all reject the stupid fables re- 
lated to us about the infernal regions,’ and he therefore 
affirms that we have nothing to fear from death which 
‘ only takes away from us the faculty of feeling pain.’ 

‘‘In one of his familiar letters, in which he must be 
supposed to have expressed his real views, he says : 
‘ Cum non ero^ sensu omni carebo? ‘ When dead, all 
feeling shall have perished with me.’ Then, O Cicero, 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


185 


if you were to be annihilated and to lose for ever all 
conscionsness, how could you care for the gods ! Could 
there really be gods for you, and to what purpose? 
How limited was their power over you, if they existed, 
since you could at any time escape from them by put- 
ting an end to your existence ! Did you not make a 
solemn humbug of yourself when you wrote a book on 
‘ The Hature of the gods V Could you, when the dag- 
ger sent by Mark Antony was at your throat, have 
thanked the gods for your glorious career, when you were 
to be annihilated into an entire forgetfulness of your past 
existence ? The poet Lucretius preached to the Koinan 
people the same doctrine of skepticism about our spir- 
itual immortality, with all the charms of harmonious and 
concise versification and with a terrible earnestness of log- 
ic. It was customary to sing on the theatres of Rome : 
JPost mortem nihil est, ‘ After death there is nothing.’ 

Caesar, in his speech in the senate against inflicting 
death on the accomplices of Catiline, although invok- 
ing the immortal gods {per deos immortales) says : 
‘Death is nothing but sleep, and, like it, relieves us 
from grief and all miseries. It is no instrument of tor- 
ture. Beyond it there is neither pain nor pleasure.’ 
Ultra neque curm Tieque gaudio locum esse. The vir- 
tuous Cato, in his reply, does not indignantly protest 
against such demoralizing sentiments. On the contrary, 
he says : ‘ Caesar has spoken well and appropriately 
Q)e7ie et composite) on life and death.’ This very Cato, 
who also invokes the immortal gods in his speech, does 
not however vindicate them against the epicurean doc- 
trine of Caesar, that they are indifierent to vice or vir- 
tue in man — whicli, it must be confessed, would bo very 
^ogical on their part, since virtue or vice in a being so 
soon to be reduced to nothingness cannot be of any im- 


186 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


portance whatever. The same Cato, if he had been 
persuaded of the immortality of the soul, which alone 
can make us care for the Deity, would not have passed a 
considerable part of the night on which he killed him- 
self, in reading the arguments of Plato in favor of that 
immortality. If Brutus had believed in the immortal- 
ity of the soul and in a future state of rewards and 
punishments, he would not have exclaimed when dying 
by his own hands : ‘ O virtue, thou art but a name !’ ' 
The belief in annihilation necessarily excludes the be- 
lief in virtue and in a benevolent Deity ; for a being 
who is to be dissolved into non-entity, there can be no 
God, and if there should be a God, why should he care 
for that God, particularly when he sees, whichsoever 
way he turns his eyes, that evil predominates, and that 
he is more largely visited with pain than with pleasure % 
For, what says Job ? ‘ Man that is born of woman is of 
few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a 
flower, and is cut down ; he fleeth also as a shadow, and 
continueth not.’ Hence the conclusion that there is no 
God ; for God without benevolence is not admissible. 

“ Bayle, in modern times, has recapitulated and sum- 
med up all the arguments, for and against, on these 
questions. As to antiquity, I have shown that atheism, 
or something much resembling it, was the result of the 
civilization of Borne, the grandest the world ever 
knew before the Christian era, and that a thorough 
skepticism had invaded the breasts of the noblest citi- 
zens of the eternal city on the virtues and the duties 
of man. Since that era, the eftects of civilization have 
shovm themselves to be the same in Paris, London and 
Hew York, and in all those regions of the earth where 
the torch of knowledge shines the brightest. Knowl- 
edge leads to civilization, and civilization to knowledge 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


187 


reciprocally, and both civilization and knowledge lead 
to the corruption of morals, and the corruption of 
morals to an interested disbelief in all religious creeds, 
to a denial of the immortality of the soul, and finally 
to atheism or pantheism. All this happening as regu- 
larly as the prescribed revolutions of the planets ! All 
this under the nose of omnipotent benevolence ! Hence 
I am willing to admit that there is a creative and prim- 
itive principle, force and power in the universe capable 
of producing man and what man discovers, or thinks 
he does. But I deny that there is such a God as you 
wish me to accept. You are always falling back on 
Christianity, because you know that, out of it, all is 
darkness for the human mind in relation to these ques- 
tions of life and death, of the immortality of the soul, 
and of the existence of a God who rewards virtue and 
punishes crime. Revelation is your only refuge, and 
that proves the correctness of my position outside of 
revelation. After all, what is revelation ? ‘ Revelation 

is truth !’ Thus spoke Christ. But, ‘ what is truth V 
was the skeptic reply of civilization through the lips 
of Pilate, the Roman representative of Caesar. Happy 
are those, I confess, who believe in that revelation. It 
is a sweet delusion, if it be one. But remember that 
faith is a ‘ gift,’ and that we are authoritatively told 
that, ‘ although many are called, few^ wdll be the. elect.’ 
Consequently, imtil better enlightened, I say, with sor- 
row in my heart, but with resignation to a fate which I 
cannot avoid, that being destined, after the brief period 
of my material existence shall be over, to be annihilated 
like the beasts of the field and the birds of the air, there 
is no God. ‘ Therefore ‘ let us drink and be merry, for 
to-morrow we die.’ Give me a glass of brandy. 

‘‘ You have argued that the liberty of action existing 


188 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


in man is a proof that he is not purely and absolutely 
material. But this is begging the question and assum- 
ing the truth of a disputed fact. You forget that this 
pretended liberty of will attributed to man has been 
an endless theme of discussion. How many have be- 
lieved in inexorable fate — the fata by wliich Jupiter 
himself was bound? Most philosophers and statesmen 
may agree, as a matter of policy, that man ought to be 
reputed free, for the good of society and for the sake 
of religion and morality, which are powerful bridles to 
the bad instincts of our nature, but do they agree that 
he is really and actually free ? Thought is the spring 
of action, and how can he be free to act or not to act 
in a particular way, who has not the power to think as 
he pleases ? What man has not been haunted by 
thoughts w^hich he could not prevent from hatching in 
his brain, and which he strove in vain to drive aw^ay ? 
Whence comes that thought which presents itself un- 
bidden to my mind ? Unbidden it comes, unbidden it 
goes. I cannot recollect it, notwithstanding my desire 
and my efforts to do so, and if not written down, it fades 
away for ever from my memory. If my body moved 
without my consent, I could not be said to be physi- 
cally free ; therefore if my mind thinks without my 
consent when I am awake and when I am asleep, I can- 
not be said to be spiritually free. Frequently my 
thoughts or ideas conflict, and one of them gets the 
mastery over the rest, and it is inferred that I have 
decided for myself, and consequently that I am free. 
But if the coni/poled ideas came up unbidden as natural 
and involuntary secretions of my brain, why not the 
controling idea ? Does the controling idea represent 
me more than the controled one ? Ho. Hence, as the 
result of that conflict, I may be determined to a course 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


189 


of action without the real exercise of any volition. 
But if my thoughts are not the necessary and unavoid- 
able secretions of that brain which is a part of my 
material organization, but are emanations from a spir- 
itual essence in me, how come I to have simultaneously 
pure and impure thoughts — thoughts which are at war 
with one another ? Can my intellect, or soul, or what- 
ever you may call it, be sound and unsound? Are 
there parts of it which are pure and others impure ? 
It must evidently be so, for the impure cannot come 
from the pure, and the pure from the impure. Thus I 
am fractionally bad and fractionally good, fractionally 
sound and fractionally rotten — here the soil which 
produces an odoriferous rose, there the soil from which 
springs up a stinking and prickly weed — here the 
domain of hell, there the domain of heaven. If the 
former is more fruitful and larger than the latter, and 
brings forth a superior force of wicked thoughts w^hich 
overcome the inferior force of honest thoughts arrayed 
against them, I am a villain ; or I am a righteous man 
should the white thoughts of purity prevail. 

But how can I be held to be a free agent in either 
character, when it is remembered that I do not think 
how and when I please ? Every body knows that some- 
times a man wishes to think on a particular subject, and 
he cannot, whilst, to his mortification and even despair, 
he cannot help thinking on another, from which he 
recoils with horror. Besides, what man, when he has 
reached that ripe old age from which, as from a com- 
manding stand point, he can clearly and calmly review 
his past life, does not come to the conclusion that, dur- 
ing all that life, he was a slave to circumstances ? And 
what is circumstance but an apparently accidental force 
which impels us in one direction rather than in another. 


190 


FEJ^NANDO DE LEMOS. 


whilst we delude ourselves with the idea that we are free 
agents? We are machines, my friend, more or less 
artistically contrived to meet the end for which we are 
respectively destined, and such blind machines can have 
no souls, no matter how galling tins may be to our pride. 
A soul ! Most physicians, a class of men whose profes- 
sion is to study the human body, do not believe in it. 
How can the soul, if immaterial, grow, expand and 
decay with my body, and be affected by all the varia- 
tions or modifications occurring in the condition of 
matter ? Has an idiot a soul ? Is that soul idiotic in 
itself, or is its idiocy due to the imperfections of the 
body ? Would that idiotic soul have become genius 
and ambition in the body of Csesar, and would the soul 
of Csesar have been palsied with imbecility, if shut up 
in the body of the idiot ? Man is composed of intelli- 
gent and unintelligent matter, and the predominancy 
of one over the other, according to a greater or lesser 
degree, gives him his rank and position among his 
species. When that temporary union of coarse matter 
and sublimated matter, visible and invisible substance 
or gas, or what is commonly called spirit, is dissolved 
by what goes by the name of death, nothing remains ; 
for that union was the condition of life and thought. 

O 

Hence the immortality of the soul is a chimera. There- 
fore, as I have already said : ^ Let us drink, eat and be 
merry, for to-morrow we die.’ Give me another glass 
of brandy. A bumper to annihilation ! While we live, 
let us live. Carpe diem, says Horace — the free transla- 
tion and amplification of which is : Let us take exist- 
ence by the forelock and squeeze out of it, whilst we 
possess the strong hand of youth, all the sweets which 
it contains. Hand me a third glass of brandy in honor 
of the three Graces.” 


CHAPTEE Xm 


TINTIN CALANDRO, THE GRAVE-DIGGER, REFUTES THE ARGU 

MENTS OF O’NEIL, THE SCHOLAR AND THE ATHEIST. 

Whilst I was thus giving a synopsis of O’Xeil’s sen- 
timents as expressed in many conversations, Tintin Ca- 
landro had some of those nervous twitches whicli in 
him were the signs of smothered impatience, and more 
than once had drawn from his violin some angry notes 
like the growl of a mastiff. Before I had done, how- 
ever, he had laid his instrument quietly aside, and had 
closed his eyes after having taken an attitude which left 
me in doubt whether he had fallen asleep or not. After 
a little while, however, he shook his head, chaunting as 
it were to himself, with a sort of musical intonation, the 
well-known scriptural words : ‘ The fool hath said in 

his heart : there is no God !’ And your Irish friend,” 
continued he, was a very great ‘fool.” 

He accepted of no evidence but that which came 
through the senses, as if what we imagine to be the 
positive and direct testimony of the senses was not fre- 
quently more deceptive, or at least less certain, than 
the circumstantial evidence proceeding from the logical 
deductions of the intellect. Pure matter and matter 
mixed up with intelligence he believed in, because he 
saw, or fancied that he saw such things. But intelli- 
gence without matter he rejected, because this is a 
phenomenon which had never fallen within the im- 

( 191 ) 


192 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


mediate reacli of his personal observation. And yet he 
believed in the existence of Csesar whom he quoted ! 
How did he know that C^esar ever existed ? Which of 
liis five senses brought that conviction home to him ? 
Hone. But this conviction settled in his mind from 
concatenation of evidence, perceived, not by his physical, 
but by his intellectual vision. Is not, for that intellec- 
tual vision, the evidence establishing the actual exist- 
ence of the invisible and spiritual ruler of the universe 
as strong as that which, commanded his belief in the 
past existence of a human being whom he never saw ? 
Hence if we believe in Caesar, we must believe in God 
for the very same and even for better reasons, and 
believe also in the immortality of the soul, which is the 
necessary corrollary of the existence of the Deity. 
Take Caesar out of history, there is a link broken in 
the chain. Take- God out of the universe, it is 
not one link, nor two links, which are missing — 
the whole chain vanishes. If the soul of man is 
not immortal, crime and virtue are empty words ; 
and if such is the case, there can be no God. 
But there is a God, because there are such things 
known to us as crime and virtue, of which the exist- 
ence cannot be doubted, in as much as they are actually 
found in the heart and the acts of man, who feels 
their presence, who discriminates between them, and 
who has invented words to express his conviction on the 
subject by saying : this is morally wrong, this is morally 
fight, tliis is crime, this is virtue. Hence the evidence 
of God lies in that very consciousness of guilt, 3r of in- 
nocence in man. It is not man himself who has put 
that consciousness there. Of what use, and for what 
purpose, would that consciousness be without God and 
the immortality of the soul? How is God to reach 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


193 


prosperous guilt reposing on the couch of luxury, or re- 
ceiving homage enthroned in the seat of power ? By 
destroying that couch of luxury and that seat of power, 
or by the pricks of conscience? But suppose Sardana- 
palus and Nero do not feel them, what then ? I am will- 
ing, however, to admit that they are lashed by their con- 
science, or to grant you the satisfaction of. seeing them 
hurled down from their tower of pride. Why such a 
punishment ? The object of punishment is to restrain, 
or to correct ; and why restrain or correct a being who 
is to be annihilated at the very moment perhaps when 
he feels the curb of restraint, or the sting of correction ? 
Thei’efore punishment and reward are aimless when con- 
fined to our brief existence. It can only be understood, 
when resorted to for the progressive improvement of an 
immortal being. Why should God encourage me in 
the path of virtue, or chastise my errors, w^hen my 
crimes or my virtues lead to the same goal — annihila- 
tion ? Hence the logical doctrine of those who do not 
believe in the immortality of the soul is, tliat God or 
the gods are indifierent to what we are doing in this 
world, and that they neither punish vice, nor reward 
virtue. Such a supposition shocks the universal instinct 
of mankind ; it follows that it cannot be true. It is re- 
pugnant to our very nature, is not of it, and cannot be 
accepted by it. 

We intuitively know that God cannot be indifierent 
to vice and virtue, and our reason must infer from it 
that the soul of man is necessarily immortal. ‘Oh! 
but the existence of evil is incompatible with the ex- 
istence of infinite and omnipotent goodness.’ Thus 
spoke O’Neil. What means this nonsensical prattle on 
the existence of evil? What is evil? Was he sure 
that what he thought evil was not good, and what he 
9 


194 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


thouglit good was not evil ? St. Paul tells us that we 
see the things of this world as in a glass, darkly. How 
is it that we do not draw lessons from the experience 
of our own lives ? When each one of us looks back on 
his past life, does he not frequently discover in its web 
that the threads, which at the time the weaving went on 
seemed black to him, were in reality white, and that the 
white ones were black ? How are we to judge of the 
proportions of a building, or of its appropriateness to 
its object, when we see but one of the stones used for 
its construction? Suppose an intelligent being unac- 
quainted with the art and object of surgery. Intro- 
duce him suddenly into a room where a man is sawing 
off the legs of an unfortunate wretch, who is mastered 
into motionless submission by vigorous arms or binding 
cords, whilst his shrieks rend the air. Would not the 
astonished witness -of such a scene, either interfere with 
impetuous indignation, or run away with terror in his 
soul, and with imprecations on his lips against the mon- 
ster who was thus tormenting the object, no doubt, of 
his hatred and vengeance ? His deductions would be 
apparently logical, and yet they would be false. The 
monster was in reality a benefactor. Thus we may 
misinterpret the high surgery of heaven. I will no 
more condescend to argue with a man, to demonstrate 
the existence of God, notwithstanding the existence 
of evil, than I would attempt to prove to him the ex- 
istence of the sun, if he denied it on the ground that 
its giving light and life to nature is incompatible with 
its scorching us with intolerable heat, with extracting 
malaria out of the bosom of the earth, and finally pro- 
ducing death. I would merely say to him : Here is the 
sun, and here is also God, a thousand times more lumin- 
ous than the sun. Woe to him who does not see both ! 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


195 


It fills me with indignation when I see pnny man 
arraigning almighty God before his petty terrestrial tri- 
bunal, and saying to him : I refuse to acknowledge 
Thee because I do not understand Thy ways. Is it not 
the climax of the most ridiculous sort of insanity ! 
"Why, man does not know himself; much less does he 
know his fellow-man. Who is not conscious that his 
own true character is not thoroughly understood by the 
very mother who nursed him, and by the friends of his 
infancy who grew up wdth him ? Do you not some- 
times hear this exclamation : How incomprehensible is 
that man ? How inexplicable is his conduct ? But 
there are circumstances which forbid explanation ; there 
are words which cannot be spoken. Otherwise, what 
seems mysterious and unaccountable would be found 
very natural and very simple. Has it not happened 
that you have been aggrieved by wrong interpretations 
put on your actions — which interpretations you were 
not at liberty to correct ? And so, O skeptic, although 
you do not know yourself, although at times you are a 
riddle and a puzzle to your own understanding, al- 
though you are often bewildered by the strange ways 
of your fellow- men, yet you believe in the existence of 
the human sphynx; and because the creator of that 
sphynx does not make Himself as clear to you as a 
schoolboy alphabet, you question whether there is any 
thing beyond that primitive organic force of the uni- 
verse which pervades it, and with the knowledge of 
which you even refuse to trouble yourself, because in 
reality you despair of ever attaining it, and because 
you think that, if attained, it would have little bear- 
ing on your happiness here. But I see man, you say, 
O atheist ! I consort with him, I embrace him with 
ray five senses, I am man myself ! . So it is with your 


196 


FERNANDO BE LEMOS. 


creator, I reply. He is as visible as man ; He is vis- 
ible in man ; you may consort with him at will ; and if 
you do not embrace him with your five senses, it is be- 
cause you choose not, and because you have voluntarily 
and for some sinful purpose of your own, made those 
senses blunt and obtuse ; and if you are not in God 
and part of God, who has made you after his own im- 
age, it is because you are ungodly and have defaced 
that image. 

“ Evil predominates in this world, and precludes the 
idea of omnipotent divine benevolence. But, admit- 
ting that it does predominate, could good be appre- 
ciated without evil ? Can there be a material sub- 
stance without a shadow in this sun-lit world of ours, 
and could the shadow be suppressed without a recast 
of creation ? How do we know that it would be bet- 
ter if recast ? How do we know but what there 
is a sufficient reason for every thing that is? Without 
misfortune, where charity ? Without national calami- 
ties, where patriotism and the sacrifice of self for the 
public good ; without the sufferings under which we 
writhe, how could our fortitude be shown, and how 
could the devotion of wife, or friend, be tested ? How 
could we measure the grandeur of that intellect which 
one man possesses, and which is almost commensurate 
with the vastness of the universe, if we had not in 
view, as a point of comparison, another intellect so 
dwarfish that it hardly rises above the instinct of the 
brute? How" could there be valleys without moun- 
tains? Who would know what light is, without the 
offset of darkness ? Which of us would ever remem- 
ber that there is a God, if prosperity only was the lot 
of man ? It is only when adversity becomes his famil- 
ial companion, when grief racks his heart, when pain 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 197 

tortures his body, that these words hurst from his 
tremulous lips : ‘ O my God !’ Probably God had 

some reason of Ilis own, for desiring not to be entirely 
forgotten by that intelligent part of His creation which 
He had gifted with foresight and memory. Hence 
pain and labor, two great institutions, which make us 
look up to God for assistance. Let us then be satisfied 
that what is, could not be otherwise. God had a mo- 
tive for every One of His acts, and lias wisely and nicely 
harmonized causes and effects. Let us trust Him im- 
plicitly and blindly, being convinced that all is well, 
and will in the end appear to us in that light, even 
should the present seem nothing but unmitigated evil 
to the dull-eyed appreciation of our finite understand- 
ing. Why not trust God to the extent that we trust 
man % A commander-in-chief gives an order ; his sol- 
diers obey without hesitation. They risk their lives or 
limbs by rushing on death dealing batteries, or undergo 
without murmuring a thousand fatigues in long 
marches. They endure hunger, thirst, cold and heat 
with stern alacrity. They have entire reliance on their 
chief, and believe that he has good reasons for every 
thing he does, although they cannot guess at them, or 
discover them at all. Well, God is the supreme com- 
mander of the universe. We are His soldiers. Why 
not take it for granted that He is right in all His inex- 
plicable manoeuvres, and that it is for our ultimate vic- 
tory over those evils which surround us, that He in- 
flicts on us laborious marches and counter marches, and 
decrees innumerable and almost incessant sufferings, 
which, if spared us, would leave us rotting in some 
foul mire, or in some voluptuous Capua, far short of the 
destination which He has in reserve for the being made 
after His own image ? 


198 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


Oil ! Bat man is not free ; lie is the slave of cir- 
ci^mstance, if not of an imperious destiny. Therefore he 
is nothing but a machine. If a machine, he is not re- 
sponsible, and if not responsible there is neither vice, 
nor virtue ; and if no vice nor virtue, what becomes 
of Grod, or the necessity of having one? Bah! Where 
is the proof that man is not free as asserted? The 
proof, I think, is on the other side. Let us see. Two 
men are placed in identical circumstances. They are 
starving, for instance ; and, what is worse for them, their 
families are starving also. Both have the opportunity to 
relieve themselves and the objects of their love by steal- 
ing without fear of detection. One says : ‘ perish my wife 
and children and myself rather than be a thief!’ The oth- 
er says : ‘ I shall steal a thousand times rather than allow 
my wife, my children and myself to die of starvation.’ 
They both act accordingly. If both have entered a 
different path under the same circumstances, is it not 
clear that they were not the slaves of those circum- 
stances? Therefore they were free. Here are two 
wheels exactly alike. They are undoubtedly machines, or 
the part of a machine, for the same screw which con- 
trols the movements of one, wiU have the same ef- 
fect on the other, if applied to it. Thus, should 
man be like a wheel, or machine, the screw of cir- 
cumstance would operate on him with mechanical 
uniformity. 

‘^Man, it is said, does not command his thoughts. 
They come and go unbidden, and if he is not master of 
his thoughts, he is not master of himself, because thought 
controls the course of action. Indeed ! Is this true ? 
I wish to be illustrious, says Bacon to himself, and he 
compels his mind to produce those stupendous works 
which will be the eternal monuments of his genius. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


199 


Let the Iliad be, says Homer, for I need bread, and the 
Iliad is. He might have chosen to be a carpenter or any 
thing else to make a living. Were not Homer and Ba- 
con free to produce or not, at will, what they have pro- 
duced ? Had they no command over their thoughts ? 
Have I not the faculty of withdrawing as it were my 
soul from my body, and to plunge it into such absorb- 
ing meditation, that the material part of my organiza- 
tion will be entirely forgotten and its wants suspended? 
Is it not related of Socrates that he would at times be so 
wrapped up in thought, that he would remain motion- 
less, and as if in a trance for hours, in the hot rays of the 
sun? Was not, on a well-known occasion, the intellect- 
ual existence of Archimedes so separated from his phys- 
ical one by the eagerness of study, that he remained ig- 
norant of the storming of Syracuse, until he received 
the blow of the Homan soldier who killed him ? Is not 
my mind a swift Ariel which, without the wand of Pros- 
pero, I can send where I please ? Can I not dismiss it 
like a flash of lightning from this cemetery, and send it 
rambling over the world ? Can I not so transport my 
spirit out of my body, that I can look at my corpse, as I 
sometimes do in fancy, and follow the funeral which 
carries it to the gi*ave, with as much distinctness of 
vision as if the conjured up scene was a real one ? Am 
I not then the master of my own mind, and do I not feel 
that it is distinct from the body which it can control with 
bit and spur,* as a good rider rules the flory steed on 
which he is seated ? 

The soul, I am told, is nothing but a secretion and 
modiflcation of matter, and must perish with matter, for 
it grows and decays with the body. A blow on the 
skull, some internal concussion or other, some physical 
inflrmity may transform genius into idiocy. A poet 


200 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


yesterday spoke like an inspired bard ; to-day he is a 
driveler. What has become of his intellect ? Is it un- 
der an eclipse % I answer that it may be as bright as 
before, but it cannot transmit its rays unbroken, undis- 
torted and undiminished through the fragments of a 
broken and tarnished glass. For instance, exquisite mu- 
sic is heard in a room adjacent to yours. You exclaim : 
‘ What a glorious musician !’ Let the instrument be 
cracked, let the strings be snapped, or the keys disar- 
ranged, and the music becomes execrable. You ex- 
claim : ‘ What a bungler !’ Yet the musician is the same. 
It is still the great performer you had heard before. 
Apply this to the body and the soul. The body has 
changed, the soul is the same, but its tunes passing 
through an altered and defective instrument, cease to be 
harmonious. The soul is not of, but in, the body, and, 
being encased in it, cannot act except with such mate- 
rial means as it can dispose of. Hence its apparent 
strength or weakness according to the conditions of our 
physical organization. 

A band of barbarians have tied me to the stake and 
torture me with demoniacal skill. I say to my writh- 
ing limbs which are convulsed with pain and to my 
tremulous flesh : be motionless ; and they assume the 
rigidity of a bar of iron. A shriek of agony is forcing it- 
self* through my throat. I say : be still, and it is still. 
My soul which thus binds the body to its will cannot be 
of the body, but is merely in it, just as the ottar of 
rose is not of, but in, the vial which prevents its evap- 
oration; and should the vial be broken, its contents 
would not be altered by the accident, but would survive 
the crystal envelope which had been given for a particular 
purpose. Thus, if my soul is not of the body, if it controls 
and directs it at will, if it panders to its appetites, or re- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


201 


fuses to minister to its most legitimate wants, or cliooses 
to torment it with macerations and privations, if it is its 
master and not its slave, it is not destined to perish with 
it, because it is of a different essence ; and if it is not to 
perish like matter, then it is to be immortal like a spir- 
it which came into us as the breath of God. As to 
Cpesar’s observation quoted by O’l^eil, that annihilation 
followed death, and therefore that death was no punish- 
ment since it puts an end to all the sufferings and trou- 
bles of life, let it be remembered that he spoke like an 
advocate, who had assumed in the senate the defence of 
Catiline’s accomplices against the capital penalty recom- 
mended by Cicero. Therefore he contended for their mere 
expulsion from Rome and the confiscation of their pro- 
perty, which he maintained to be a greater punishment 
than death. But surely CsBsar could not have believed 
what he said. He knew very well that the accused 
would have joyfully accepted exile and confiscation of 
property in preference to death, therefore exile was not 
the greater punishment, and for obvious reasons. Ex- 
iles have been recalled, confiscated property has been 
released, but dead men never return to life. Admitting, 
however, that Caesar spoke as Sallustius makes him 
speak, it was a speech for the occasion and for a partic- 
ular purpose. It is hard to suppose that Caesar, who so 
ardently desired such immortality as this world can af- 
ford, seriously and really thought that his grand soul 
or mighty intellect could be reduced to nothingness by 
death. But, whatever was his true sentiment on this 
subject, the popular instinct, which in such matters is 
probably surer than individual perception, would not 
admit that the soul of Caesar was mortal. The people 
said, and believed that the comet which appeared im- 
m-ediately after Caesar’s death, was Caesar’s soul. 

9 * 


202 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


“ I agree, however, on one point with jonr defniict 
Irish friend — which is — that all the arguments that can 
he used for or against the freedom of the will of man, 
for or against the incompatibility of the existence of 
evil with the existence of omnipotent benevolence, and 
for or against the immortality of the sonl, have long 
ago been exhausted ; and those who are curious about 
it must be referred to the learned disquisitions, more or 
less lucid, which are to be found in libraries. I will 
merely content myself with one argument in the shape 
of a question after the Socratic fashion. What is most 
to be desired for the improvement of man, and what is 
it that most contributes to- that improvement? I be- 
lieve that I do not risk much in saying that the univer- 
sal answer will be, that it is the pursuit, acquisition 
and fruition of truth. Hence it follows, as a natural 
deduction, that whatever contributes to the moral and 
physical improvement of man has its foundation in 
truth, and is the criterion and the test of truth. There- 
fore, to ascertain what is true, we have only to find out 
what is beneficial to our race. If it be religion and 
morality, for they are inseparable, the inevitable infer- 
ence is that religion and morality are truths ; and if 
religion is the truth, or a truth, the logical sequence is 
that a belief in free-will, in the immortality of the 
soul, and in a future state of reward and punishment is 
based on truth ; for these doctrines or dogmas are the 
foundations of all religions, and none can deny that re- 
ligion improves and renders man virtuous and trusty. 
This is the view which the practical sense and experi- 
ence of mankind take of it. Let us illustrate it by an 
example. Two men stand before you — one of them 
has no faith in the existence of the soul, much less in 
any accountability to God for his actions, but believes 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


203 


only in the existence of his transient self, and in the 
pursuit of his own individual welfare, as a paramount 
right vested in him by nature. The other is firmly 
convinced that his immortal soul is answerable to God, 
for all his deeds whilst he runs here through his short 
career of joys and sorrows. Which of these two men 
will you choose for the keeper and guardian of your 
treasure, life, or honor ? Surely the believer, and not 
the skeptic. I leave you to draw your own conclusions 
from the motives w'hich have determined your choice. 
The same reasoning applies to Christianity. It is true 
because it is perfection, and would make man perfect, 
if strictly followed ; and if it is perfection, it will hard- 
ly be maintained that it can have come from man, who 
is imperfect, and if it does not come from man, it must 
have come fi’om God, and if from God, it must have 
been revealed. This is Pascal’s reasoning, and you will 
permit me to believe that Pascal is fully as good au- 
thority as O’Heil. But enough of this. O’Heil knows 
better now. One thing at least he is sure of ; it is that 
he has a soul which has not perished with his body. 
As to myself, I need no information on the subject 
from philosophers or metaphysicians. I deal too much 
with the dead, not to know that all is not dead which 
appears dead.” 

‘‘ Tintin Calandro,” I said, ‘‘ I have listened to you 
with much pleasure, and, I hope, with profit. Alas ! I 
am far from being the Christian I ought to be. 1 have 
been wayward and headstrong and selfish in my world- 
ly career, and the dupe of my ungoverned passions. 
But my mother’s faith and the prayers which she 
taught me to lisp in my childhood, whilst kneeling at 
her feet with my hands clasped together and my eyes 
riveted on her angelic face, have sunk too deep in the 


204 ' 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


memory of my heart ever to be forgotten. I will try 
yet to become what she desired me to he. I have al- 
ready, in more than one terrible ordeal through which 
it has been my fate to pass, submitted with resignation 
to the will of God, and I have on those occasions re- 
peated to myself, whilst my brow sweated with the 
agony of grief, the words of a very old inscription in 
Spanish, which, in my travels, I read on the frontis- 
piece of the heavy stone gate of the castle of Coarraze 
in Bearn, at’ the foot of the Pyrenees, in which castle 
the great Henry lY of .France was raised.” 

Ha ! ” exclaimed Tintin with lively interest, what 
is it ? I am as fond of moss-covered inscrii^tions as of 
tombs.” 

“ It ran tbus I replied, ^Lo queha de ser^ no puede 
f altar? What must be^ cannot fail. And here is the 
origin of it as told me on the spot. There was a Span- 
ish nobleman, who, centuries ago, fled from the wrath 
of his sovereign and took refuge at the court of the 
king of Havarre, who resided at Pau. The king of 
Spain demanded the surrender of his subject ; the king 
of Havarre refused, and pleaded the sacred rights of 
hospitality. The Spanish monarch was not satisfled, 
and threatened war against his weaker neighbor, who, 
fearing the consequences of it, entered into a negoti- 
ation which ended in a compromise, as is generally the 
case. The king of Havarre would not arrest the fugi- 
tive and deliver him up, nor would he permit him to 
be arrested by the emissaries of Spain, within the pre- 
cincts of his royal domain of Coarraze which had been 
assigned for the residence of his guest ; but he consent- 
ed to his being seized any where else on his territory. 
The persecuted nobleman was secretly informed of the 
agreement between the two sovereigns, and cautioned 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


205 


not to venture out of the privileged grounds where he 
■would remain safe. Time flew, and the fugitive be- 
came very tired of his confinement. He had recourse 
to every sort of amusement and occupation, but in vain. 
At last, with the permission of his protector, he took 
to building and to making improvements. He erected 
pavilions, and added wings to the main edifice.' He 
even raised a lofty tower from which he could run his 
eyes over the broad expanse of country on any part of 
which he could not set his foot. He would every day 
walk to the principal gate of that royal residence, and, 
standing on its threshold, would gaze wistfully at the 
public road which ran by it. One day that gate struck 
him as not being in good taste and in harmony with 
the rest of the premises. He had it pulled down, and 
ordered another to be put up. He drew the design 
himself, and it became with him a labor of love to have 
it properly executed. Every day he was among the 
workmen, superintending them and correcting their 
blunders. But, strange to say, notwithstanding all his 
eflbrts, the gate, being finished, looked not, and never 
could be made to look, as if it stood plumb. It seem- 
ed to have a horror of the perpendicular; it always 
leaned in one direction or the other. The nobleman 
got out of all patience with his workmen. Hay after 
day he was amongst them, wmndering at this architec- 
tural singularity which he strove in vain to alter, and 
sometimes, in his wrath and disappointment, using 
harsh language and threats which they bore with exemp- 
lary meekness. 

“ ‘ It is not plumb, you rascally blockheads,’ he would 
say. 

“ ^ Pardon us, my lord, it is plumb.’ 

Hence endless disputes, and repeated examinations 


206 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


and verifications of the position of the stubborn gate. At 
last, one day when the contest had waxed very hot about 
the gate being in the perpendicular line or not, one of 
the mechanics who had always contradicted the noble- 
man with the most teasing pertinacity, putting himself 
in the middle of the public road, and taking a minute 
and critical look at the gate, said in the most provoking 
manner : 

“ ^ W ell, I consent to be fiayed alive, if any one stand- 
ing here as I do, does not admit that the gate is perfect- 
ly perpendicular ; and this is certainly the most proper 
point to look at it.’ 

The enraged nobleman, forgetful of his safety, 
rushed out to see if the fellow was right or riot, and was 
immediately seized by some of the workmen, who were 
the disguised emissaries of the king of Spain. The un- 
fortunate prisoner met his fate with dignified calm- 
ness. 

^ I am ready to follow you,’ he said, ‘ without your 
using constraint. But do me at least one favor before 
carrying me away. Set this gate plumb.’ 

‘‘ His wish was immediately complied with ; there was 
no longer any difiiculty in obtaining the perpendicular. 
‘And now,’ continued he, ‘but one thing more; put 
this inscription on the gate : Lo que ha de ser^ no jp^iede 
f altar. What must be^ cannot faiV^ ’ 

“ I like that Spaniard,” said Tintin Calandro with a 
sort of childish but earnest simplicity. “ What was his 
name?” 

“ I do not know.” 

“ I am sorry for it : I should like to inquire for him 
among the dead and learn the end of his story. The 
fact is, that there is something which strikes me in it. 
It is this : we are never satisfied with what we are per- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


207 


mitted to achieve, and there is always in a man’s life 
some gate or other which he has determined to set 
plumb ; and, neglecting every tiling else, he works at 
it until the gate crushes him. Will you believe it ? 
The very gates of my cemetery are not plumb. It used 
to worry me. How I am content to let them stand as 
they are, without any more fretting about it ; for it may 
be the perfection of wisdom to let things remain as they 
happen to be on this earth, be they in or out of the per- 
pendicular line, without for ever worrying every body 
to set or keep every thing plumb.” 


CHAPTER XVin. 


VAIiDECK, THE RICH GERMAN MERCHANT, AND ANAYA, THE 
PORTUGUESE JEW. 

In one of my day visits to the St. Louis cemetery, I 
found Tintin Calandro, much to my astonishment, read- 
ing a newspaper. He w^as seated near a grave whicli 
his two faithful black subordinates had been digging. 
“ Why, my friend,” I exclaimed, “ are you retaking in- 
terest in the affairs of this world ?” 

Oh !” said he with a melancholy smile, it is long, 
very long since T bade farewell to this busy world of 
ours, and, as you well know, I am not disposed to go 
back to it. But somebody dropped this newspaper on 
3 ^onder tomb, and I picked it up. When you spoke to 
me, I was thinking of the singular impression which a 
newspaper produces on one who, hke myself, lives in a 
cemetery. It is here rather than anywhere else, that a 
philosopher must listen to those distant echoes which 
come from the hubbub beyond these walls, and which 
make him appreciate more keenly the repose he enjoys 
and his placid intercourse with the dead. What jost- 
ling of each other among men outside of this place ! 
What high and what groveling ambition ! What ad- 
verse interests ! What intrigues, and counter intrigues ! 
What sleepless passions 1 What deafening noise ! What 
incessant tumult ! What lying ! What cheating ! 
What envying and slandering ! What open and secret 
murders ! And yet what does it amount to in the end ? 

( 208 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


209 


One day, my lord Cupidity, or whatever may be the 
appellation of that other thing which most stings man 
into action, is brought to me in a coffin, in the shape 
of a corpse, with all its past failures, successes, hopes 
and disappointments,nailed at last between four planks. 
Another name is added to the never-ending list of obit- 
uaries, and the fullest and longest life shrinks within 
the span of an epitaph. The scene in the church-yard, 
in Shakspeare’s Hamlet, is the one most to my taste in 
all the works of that author. Poor prince ! His mother 
w'as an adultress ! His uncle and stepfather a fratri- 
cide ! His friends would have sold him at an}" time, 
and cheap enough. The woman he had loved commit- 
ted suicide, and he was haunted by his murdered fath- 
er’s ghost ! Ho wonder that he found the atmosphere 
of a church-yard so congenial, and that he took a mel- 
ancholy pleasure in apostrophizing the skull of Yorick, 
who had been his boon companion in more than one 
merry revel.” 

Tintin Calandro was interrupted in his reflections by 
a messenger who brought him a note. He glanced at 
it, and said to me : I am instructed to have ready at 
five o’clock in the afternoon, to-day, the family tomb 
of the wealthy merchant Yaldeck. "Well, it shall be 
ready. He dies full of years, and honored by all, after 
what, I believe, may be said to be a long career of un- 
interrupted prosperity?’ 

“I happen to know better than that,” I replied. 
“ He was near being ruined twice, a thing not unusual 
with merchants. The first time, he became insane for 
a while, and, on the second occasion, he was near at- 
tempting his own life in a fit of despair. How that he 
is dead, and is coming to dwell within your dominions, 
you are bound to take some interest in knowing some 


210 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


thing of his life, and I shall therefore relate to you a 
few of its main incidents. 

Yaldeck was of an excellent German family. He 
fell in love, on the romantic hanks of the Rhine, with 
a girl who was his inferior in birth and very poor. His 
father forbade his intended marriage. Yaldeck did 
not respect the prohibition, and married according to 
the dictates of his heart, in consequence of which he 
was disinherited. He came to Hew Orleans with a 
light cargo of German goods, which he peddled along 
the banks of the Mississippi, and in the interior of the 
then territory of Orleans, which was subsequently pro- 
moted to be the State of Louisiana. He became ac- 
quainted with most of our planters, pleased and inter- 
ested them in his behalf, for he was a man of education 
and refinement of manners, and when, in the course of 
time, he set up as a commission merchant, he was so 
extensively patronized by them, that, in a few years, 
he rose to the first rank in our mercantile community. 
But there came one of those periodical crises, which, 
like epidemics, af0.ict our country. There had been a 
feverish mania for speculating in cotton. The higher 
the staple was sold, the more greedily was it bought, 
as if it had been destined to go up indefinitely. Yal- 
deck was a man of good sense, and yet he lost it on 
that occasion. It seems that there are, at times, great 
commercial or political fits of insanity for communities 
as well as for individuals. History teaches us that 
nations have gone mad more than once. Yaldeck had 
been seized with the contagion of the hour, and had 
speculated largely. He learned with dismay that his 
drafts on England and Germany for more than three 
hundred thousand dollars had not been accepted, and 
were coming back on him. He was aware that he 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


211 


could not meet those obligations, and that he was to go 
into bankruptcy. In those days this was more serious 
than in ours. To be a bankrupt was a thing which 
sounded badly in many ears, and made cheeks turn 
pale. This shows tlie barbarous condition in which 
New Orleans was, when such a prejudice of the dark 
ages still prevailed against such an easy way of settling 
old debts. Yaldeck himself had antediluvian Ger- 
manic notions on the subject. He thought that no act 
of any legislature and no decree of court could dis- 
charge him from the payment of a just debt. The 
consequence was that he lost his mind at the prospect 
of ruin and disgrace which rose before him. 

Fortunately Yaldeck’s wife, according to European 
habits in the mercantile classes, had kept herself well 
informed of her husband’s business. She had not con- 
fined herself to playing a part in the parlor, or in the 
nursery, but she had always acted as if she took much 
interest in commercial operations in general, and par- 
ticularly in those of her husband. She had gradually 
drawn him into communicating to her all his plans, by 
the apparent eagerness with which she listened to him. 
He had even permitted her to read, when she pleased, 
the business letters addressed to or by him, and he had 
frequently used her as his secretary, for which occupa- 
tion she showed the utmost readiness and capacity. 
She had looked into his books under the playful pretext 
that she wished to be able to act as his clerk, should he 
ever be compelled to retrench his expenses. In fact, 
without alarming his pride, and without appearing to 
exercise intermeddling influence over him in matters 
which were not within her department, she had ac- 
quired considerable authority over him, and she acted 
as an invisible and unfelt check, although a real and 


212 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


effective one. She knew the frequent wrecks to which 
merchants are liable, and, although she did not pretend 
to pilot the ship in which her husband’s fortune and 
reputation were embarked, yet she desired to be on 
deck to spy the horizon and perhaps to discover in 
time the breakers ahead. With true feminine instinct 
and vague sagacity she had tried to dissuade Yaldeck 
from his late cotton speculations, but unfortunately she 
had failed. The current of example which drove him 
onward with a host of companions in folly, was too 
strong for her to arrest. Her worst fears were more 
than realized. Hot only was her husband ruined, but 
he became insane. She, however, did not lose her 
presence of mind and fortitude under the crushing 
afflictions which had visited her. She asked for an 
interview with the presidents and cashiers of two of 
our banks, and through them she obtained leave to ap- 
pear before the respective directions of those two 
institutions, to which she demonstrated that it was 
their interest to come to the relief of Yaldeck, because 
a timely loan of three hundred thousand dollars would 
prevent her husband from failing,' and thereby would 
not only save the credit of one of our first merchants, 
but also ward off heavy losses which otherwise would 
fall on the banks and on certain influential firms, con- 
nected in their relations with her husband’s house. She 
spoke with such an astonishing knowledge of business, 
and with such a depth of feeling as a woman and a 
wife, that, exciting the admiration and commanding 
the confidence of those she addressed, she obtained the 
desired loan. She paid all the drafts when presented, 
and, gradually making her husband understand that 
his house was as firm as ever, she restored him to rea- 
son, to his family and to society. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


213 


Years had elapsed, and Yaldeck would have been 
cited as the richest merchant in ISTew Orleans, were it 
not that he had a rival in Anaya, the Portuguese Jew. 
Yaldeck was fond of show and lived with magnificence, 
giving profuse and costly entertainments. Hence he 
had acquired reputation for generosity and had become 
very popular. He had been twice elected a senator in 
the State legislature without his desiring it, and other 
honors had been tendered him, which he had refused 
as incompatible with his avocations. He had but one 
son, to whom he was devotedly attached, but whom he 
ruled despotically. It was in his nature to be a despot 
like his own father, and, forgetting what he himself had 
suffered in consequence of it under the paternal roof, 
forgetting tliat he was the disowned and the disinherited 
for no other cause than that of having married to please 
himself, he was pursuing toward his son the same 
course which had been pursued toward himself. He 
had been a slave ; he had resented it bitterly ; and yet, 
in his turn, he was making his son a slave. So little do 
we profit by the lessons which we receive 1 

“ Anaya, the Jew, had a different turn of mind. He 
was a man of remarkable energy and of indomitable 
will, it is true, but that will became exceedingly pliant 
when in contact with that of his daughter Esther. 
Anaya was a widower, and Esther was Hhe sole 
daughter of his house and heart.’ He was a small, 
lean, dark visaged man, as nimble as a weazel, and 
whose foot hardly touched the ground in his rounds of 
business through the streets of Hew Orleans. He 
seemed to be walking on springs, and was never seen 
witliout a sort of half-formed smile on his thin lips and 
a twinkle in his eye, which some interpreted as expres- 
sive of self-satisfaction at the consciousness of his being 


214 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


a razor so superlatively polished and sharp. He lived 
entirely for business, having no idea outside of it and 
unconnected with money making. Every evening, a 
little before sunset, be took a walk with Esther, whose 
magnificent shape and eastern face — such as painters 
have loved to gift with the celebrated female charac- 
ters of the Bible, made every one turn round to cast a 
lingering look at the splendid Jewess, for there was no 
mistaking the origin attested by such features. There 
was in her marvelous beauty a sort of effulgence, 
which a lover might have thought sufiicient to light up 
the very temple of Solomon and add to its splendor, 
had she lived when it existed and had she appeared 
there to worship the God of Israel. That royal poet 
and philosopher might have been tempted to make her 
the theme of one of his songs, and might have chosen 
her as the sultana of his soul. Whatever may have 
been the physical and intellectual discrepancies which 
were conspicuous between the father and the daughter, 
and they were many, those two beings agreed and were 
congenial at least in one thing — the love of retirement. 
Anaya lived in an humble house, and Esther was 
always modestly dressed. Ho diamond ever sparkled 
on her person, and she vras but an indifferent customer 
for milliners. It is not surprising, therefore, that Anaya 
was said by some to be the Jew of Jews, and meaner 
than the meanest of his race. There was a faint rumor, 
however, that he secretly gave largely to the poor of all 
religious denominations. But who had ever seen it, or 
could swear to it ? ‘ Pooh ! a Jew is a Jew,’ was the 

reply to any who attempted to throw in a word in favor 
of Anaya, and this pithy sentence silenced at once all 
opposition. 

‘Waldeck was an ambitious and ostentatious man. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


215 


and his hobby was to be the first — a sort of Caesar — 
among the moneyed men of the city. But, notwithstand- 
ing his large credit, notwithstanding the profusion of 
his household expenses, and perhaps on account of it, 
the public obstinately believed that he was not so rich 
as the modest and hard-saving Portuguese Jew, and it 
was rumored that the name of Yaldeck ranked a little 
lower than the name of Anaya in the estimate of the 
banks. Yaldeck was cut to the quick, and, although a 
man of generous impulses, allowed the worst feelings 
of his nature to prevail so much over the best, as to 
make him gradually harbor in his breast the greatest 
aversion for Anaya, based on an intense jealousy. It is 
not astonishing that what has happened frequently 
should happen again. This world of ours, in its rota- 
tory movements is but a repetition of old things, and, 
notwithstanding it is so fond of changes, it is constant- 
ly, after a little while, resuming and putting on its cast- 
off* garments. Hence Solomon said with truth that 
there was nothing new under the sun. Well, precisely 
because Yaldeck’s son and Anaya’s daughter should 
have kept apart from each other, they came together 
and mutual love ensued. Esther did not hestitate to 
make an avowal of her feelings to her father as soon as 
she ascertained their existence. The old man listened 
quietly, and, drawing Estlier to his bosom, kissed her 
brow and said : 

“ ‘ Two words .... two words of warning, daughter. 
Hear a short story. I was at the battle of the 8th of 
January gained, in 1815, by General Jackson. Yal- 
deck was there also. A cannon ball struck me down, 
lacerating a considerable portion of my body. I must 
confess tliat the surgeon in attendance immediately 
declared that the wound was not mortal, and this may 


216 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


palliate to some extent the cruel levity of Yaldeck’s 
remark on that occasion.’ 

“ ‘Father, father, what did he say?’ exclaimed Es- 
ther, gro^ying pale. 

“‘Well, he said, on hearing of my misfortune, “It 
may be a fit retribution, and a gentle hint of Provi- 
dence to the Jew, by which let us hope that he will 
profit. The Shylock has taken so many pounds of fiesh 
out of Christian hearts, that it is just that a shot from 
a Christian gun should have carried off some of his 
own.” ’ 

‘‘Esther sank into her father’s arms and wept bitterly. 
“ ‘ Daughter,’ continued Anaya, ‘ I know that the son 
is not responsible for the father’s harshness of heart. 
You have my consent to act as you jfiease in this mat- 
ter. But beware that the unfeeling jester does not jest 
at you.’ 

“In his turn, Yaldeck’s son opened himself to his fa- 
ther. ‘ My son,’ replied he dryly, ‘ marriage is a very 
serious thing — very. I must reflect on the subject, for 
your sake.’ . 

“Early on the next morning he entered his son’s 
room. ‘ I have,’ he said, ‘ given due consideration to the 
communication which you made to me yesterday. For 
the present, I will not express either approbation or 
disapprobation, of your choice. You are yet very 
young, and I wish you to travel before you settle in 
life. You shall depart to-morrow in one of my ships, 
and make yourself personally acquainted with all my 
correspondents in Europe. In two years you will come 
back.’ 

‘‘ The disconsolate youth, after having written a hasty 
letter to Esther, in which he informed her of what had 
happened, and pledged himself to eternal constancy, 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


217 


obeyed his father as he was wont to do in all things. 
The ship which carried him away carried also a let- 
ter addressed by Yaldeck to the Austrian minister of 
foreign affairs in Y ienna, and president of the emperor’s 
cabinet council. It ran thus : 

‘ Prince, — A circumstance, which I always thought 
one of the most pleasant events of my life, once put it 
in my power to render to your excellency a service, 
which you spontaneously assured me would never be 
forgotten. You had the kindness to say, that if I ever 
asked you a favor, it should be granted. I now take the 
liberty to remind you of a promise which you so gra- 
ciously made. You will soon be informed of the arri- 
val in Yienna of my son, recommended to the great 
banking house of Eothschild & Co. It is my desire 
that he should be arrested, under the pretext of his be- 
ing connected with some of those political intrigues 
which are always kept on foot by those disorganizers 
who are so numerous and so active in Europe. I beg 
that he be shut up in some fortress, but treated with 
gentleness whilst thus imprisoned. The bankers I have 
mentioned to your excellency will be instructed to pro- 
vide liberally for all his wants. My object, in depriv- 
ing my son of his liberty for a little while, is to save 
him from the consequences of a foolish amoun. 

^ I have the honor, prince, to be, with the most pro- 
found respect, your excellency’s most humble and faith 
ful servant.’ 

The puissant man in Yienna remembered the debt 
of gratitude which he had promised to discharge, and 
the young traveler was arrested in compliance with his 
father’s request. As soon as he was informed of the 
10 


218 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


fact, Yaldect made no secret of it. He publicly and 
contemptuously said, that he would incarcerate his son 
for his lifetime rather than allow him to marry- a Jew- 
ess. His object was to wound, and he did wound. 
Two weeks afterward he received this brief note from 
Anaya : 

“‘SiE, — My daughter has just married a Jew like 
myself. She hopes that your son’s imprisonment will 
soon cease, as there is no longer any cause for it.’ 

One year after this incident, there was another finan- 
cial crisis. Again Yaldeck had been imprudent, and 
had not resisted the temptation of speculating im- 
mensely in cotton. There seemed to be some fatality 
about such an infatuation. The liabilities which he 
was suddenly called upon to meet were five hundred 
thousand dollars, and all his resources, owing to the 
stringency of the times, had become unavailable. Yal- 
deck was an exceedingly proud and sensitive man, with 
all the prejudices, as I have said before, which had pre- 
vailed so long against bankrupts in his native country. 
Besides, the day had not yet come, even for this new 
and most progressive part of the world, althougli it 
was now approaching, when the more bankruptcies 
a man goes through, the higher his credit, and the 
greater his weight and consideration in society. Yal- 
deck had not changed his old conviction — that no law 
can free a man from the moral obligation of paying his 
debts. He was also antiquated in many other respe cts, 
and particularly as to what was understood as honor in 
former times. Evidently the man’s brain had a taint' 
of insanity, or was prepared for it. Otherwise, how 
could he, in the nineteenth century, entertain notions 


FERNANDO DE lEMOS. 


219 


so little in harmony with those new gospels which had 
lately beamed on the world, and introduced such 
changes in religion, morality, philosophy, politics, and 
the usages of social intercourse ? Saue, or not, on one 
thing he was inflexibly determined — which was — not to 
be a bankrupt and poor, and survive it. He had not 
learned the art to become a bankrupt, remain rich, and 
retain a quiet conscience. He had not adopted the con- 
venient maxim : ‘ What eveiy body else does, I am jus- 
tified in doing.’ I mention this as another proof of his 
predisposition to insanity. Hence it follows that he 
did not think of putting aside under his wife’s petticoat 
the greatest portion of his property, which he could 
thus have saved from the seizure of his creditors, or 
rather of his creditor, for he had learned that Anaya 
the Jew had bought up all his liabilities, and had him 
in his gripe. This added to the intenseness of his des- 
pair, which became so ungovernable, that he resolv- 
ed to put an end to his life. He wrote a letter to 
his son, in which he informed him of his unchangeable 
resolution, and gave him instructions as to certain things 
to be done after his death. Enclosed was another let- 
ter to be delivered to his wife. It was seven o’clock 
in the evening when he sealed that communication to 
his family. 

“ ^ Peter,’ said he to his black body-servant, ‘ you 
will carry this letter to my son at half-past twelve 
to-night. Take care not to fail. You will knock him 
up, because it is important that he should receive it 
precisely at the time which I mention.’ 

“ The negro, who had some misgivings as to his being 
able to keep awake and be punctual, came to the con- 
clusion after much sage cogitation, that it was better 
to deliver the letter immediately, and thus make sure 


220 


FEI^A^ANDO DE LEMOS. 


tliat it would reach its destination at half-past twelve, 
as desired by his old master. Besides, servants are 
remarked to have frequently a natural blundering dis- 
position to do the very reverse of what they are told. 
This accounts for the reception of the letter several 
hours before the intended one. On reading it, the 
young man ran to Anaya’s house. It was eight o’clock. 
The Jew was in his closet, deeply engaged in examin- 
ing some papers, which examination he now and then 
interrupted to make additions to an interminable col- 
umn of numbers which spread before him. The 
youth flung himself at Anaya’s feet, exclaiming : 

‘ O, pray, spare my father ; he is in your power. I 
know how much he has wronged you. But, be gener- 
ous, save him from ruin and death. Do not force him 
into bankruptcy ; stop the arm that will soon be lifted 
up for self-destruction. At midnight he will cease to 
live. You know him well, and you cannot doubt that 
he will do what he contemplates.’ 

“ ‘ You forget, young man,’ said Anaya with a stern- 
ness which was the more alarming from theacy tone of 
the speaker, ‘you forget that I am a Jew, not a Chris- 
tian ; and that my religion permits me to exact a tooth 
for a tooth arid an eye for an eye.’ 

“ At that moment a door opened, and Esther walked 
up to her father without appearing to notice the youth, 
who had remained in the same posture. She put a fin- 
ger on her father’s shoulder, and, looking imploringly 
in his face, she said with a calm voice made still more 
impressive by its gentle tone : 

‘“Father, pardon your enemy whose son is at your 
feet. Pardon him for my sake. I know you will, for 
you have never refused me any thing.’ 

“Without waiting for an answer, she kissed his brow 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


221 


and quietly withdrew as she had entered. Anaya laid 
his elbow on his desk, and bent his forehead to rest it 
on the palm of his hand. In that attitude he remained 
several minutes. The suitor for mercy continued on 
his knees, breathlessly expecting the decision of him 
w^ho held in his power his father’s life and mercantile 
reputation. It seemed to him that the beating of his 
heart must have been audible in the awful silence of 
that room. At last, Anaya drew up painfully a deep 
sigh, as if he was mourning over the sacrifice of some 
cherished plan at the accomplishment of which he had 
long aimed, and, taking a pen, wrote these words to 
Yaldeck : 

“ ^ Sm, — I am your only creditor, as you know. I fore- 
go my well-matured and successful scheme of ven- 
geance. Your obligations shall not be protested. I 
will grant you what terms you may desire. My notary 
is known to you. Call on him ; he will have received 
my instructions, and your affairs shall be satisfactorily 
settled.’ He signed: ^ Anaya the Jew.’ 

“ He handed the note open to the young man, who 
glanced at it, and who, after kissing Anaya’s hands in 
a transport of gratitude, darted like a deer to return 
home and save his father. Yaldeck did not fail as was 
generally expected, and re-established his fortune, which 
became larger than before. Truth requires it to be 
said that he was profoundly grateful, and sought the 
Jew’s friendship with as much perseverance and earn- 
estness as he had been sedulous before in avoiding all 
contact with him. But the Jew checked all his ad- 
vances. He remained cold and distant, and contented 
himself with being a mere acquaintance for Yaldeck, 
to whom he would barely touch his hat as they met, 
and then passed on.” 


CHAPTEE XIX. 


SOMETHINa ON THE JEWS. THE WHITE AND BLACK PEAS 
OP PAPILLON, THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE. 

ft 

A WEEK later, I visited Tin tin Calandro. You 
have neglected me,” lie said, since Yaldeck’s funeral. 
It was a grand atfair. The whole city, it seems to me, 
escorted him to his last place of repose ; and, what 
pleased me exceedingly, was the presence of Anaya. I 
kept my eye on him. He came close to the grave, 
looked at it fixedly, and I thought I saw tears glisten- 
ing in his eyes. Something had evidently touched and 
softened his heart. I wonder what can be the feelings 

O 

of a man who stands by the tomb of his enemy, and 
who can say : ‘ I have saved him from ruin, from despair, 
and from destruction at his own hands.’ Faith ! I am a 
Christian by birth and conviction, but I assure you that, 
at that moment, I envied that Jew.” 

‘‘ Since you take so much interest in Anaya,” I 
said, ‘Het me tell you, Tintin Calandro, that Yaldeck’s 
will has just been opened. It contains these words : 
‘ Joseph Anaya is the man whom I esteem the most in 
this world, and whom, with my dying breath, I love to 
proclaim my benefactor. I hereby appoint him my test- 
amentary executor, and I bequeath to him, as a feeble 
testimonial of my feelings toward him, the sum of one 
hundred thousand dollars, which I beg him to use in the 
c(! nstruction of a synagogue, should he deem proper so to 
( 222 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


223 


do. After wliat he knows to have passed between him 
and me, I hope that he will feel that he cannot refuse 
me this last favor.’ ” 

“ Bravo !” exclaimed Tintin, ‘‘ and what has Anaya 
done 

“He has accepted the trust and the legacy, but only 
to distribute the amount of the legacy among the Chris- 
tian charity institutions of the city.” 

“ Bravissimo I” ejaculated Tintin, rubbing his hands 
as if he wanted to strip them of their skin. 

“ Stop,” said I, “ it i^ not all. Anaya has declared 
that he would carry into execution Yaldeck’s desire as 
to the building of a synagogue, but that it should be at 
his own expense.” 

Tintin leaped full three feet high, and, when again 
safely resting on solid ground, exclaimed : “ By my 
good soul, this is as proud a Jew as ever was any Pay- 
nim warrior, or Christian knight in the days of chivalry. 
He is an honor to his race. When he dies, I shall seek 
his friendship in the realm of spirits. Then only will 
it be permitted to poor Tintin Calandro, the grave-dig- 
ger, to approach on a footing of equality Anaya the 
rich Jew.” 

A moment of silence ensued. It was broken by Tin- 
tin, who said to me : “ Do you know that, in the midst 
of these tombs, where I have nothing better to do than 
to think, I have frequently meditated on the Jews, and 
have come to the conclusion, that they are the most 
wonderful race that ever lived. What has become of 
the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, the 
Greeks, the Romans and the other nations of antiquity % 
Either swept away, or entirely different for the worse, 
from what they were formerly. The Jew alone — the 
Jew of to-day is the Jew of the past. Here is a people. 


224 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


and the only one, whose history begins with the creation 
of the world. Their religion, their legislation, their 
population in its number, their literature, their preju- 
dices, their customs and manners have remained the 
same, whether existing in Judea as an independent na- 
tion, or dragged collectively into captivity, or individ- 
ually dispersed throughout the earth after their nation- 
ality had been shivered into fragments. They still say : 
We are a chosen people, we are the elect of the Lord, 
we shall be restored to the Holy Land, we were and 
are distinct, and shall ever be distinct from the rest 
of mankind. There is but one God — it is the God of 
Israel, and the Messiah is still to come. Is it not a 
most remarkable fact, that it is the only nation in the 
world which never worshiped persistently a multiplici- 
ty of gods? Although some of them occasionally 
strayed into idolatry, yet pantheism and paganism nev- 
er were institutions with them, as among the other na- 
tions. Can there be a greater phenomenon than the 
immutability of that people ? They seem to be suscept- 
ible of neither expansion, nor contraction. What a 
miracle that a nation of live or six millions of souls 
should have so long retained its existence and identity, 
after its being rooted out of its native land? God 
grasped the Jews like a handful of sand and flung them 
to the four quarters of the horizon, and yet each grain 
remains imperishable and unmixed. It is as if some 
drops of the water of t\e Eed Sea had been cast into 
the Atlantic Ocean, and still retained their distinctive 
color and their original composition, after resisting a 
fusion into which they could not be lashed by the 
storms of successive centmles. What has not perished 
among those things which existed four thousand years 
ago ? The Jew alone floats like the ark over the vast 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


225 


deluge of destruction. He is a wreck, it is true, but a 
wreck gifted with the awful privilege of bidding defi- 
ance to time, the resistless. 

“ Take a Jew in any part of the world, and how does 
he difier from a Jew in the days of Moses ? Simply in 
dress. He has the same religion, the same laws, the 
same moral principles, the same observances and cere- 
monies prescribed by the legislator of Mount Sinai. 
He still believes in the same promises ; and the ungrat- 
ified hope which his heart still cherishes has traversed 
with unimpaired strength the barren wilderness of forty 
centuries. In the French, the English, the Spanish, the 
German Jew, it is the Jew who predominates over the 
Frenchman, the Englishman, the Spaniard and the 
German. First, the Jew, and then any thing else you 
please. Heither blood nor water will wash out his na- 
tional and primitive type. The seal of Jerusalem is on 
his brow. Is it possible to refuse to believe that he is 
singled out, marked and put aside for the accomplish- 
ment of some grand purpose, to which he has been des- 
tined by Heaven from all eternity, and that he is em- 
phatically a providential instrument? Take a Greek 
family, for instance, and carry them to England. After 
five hundred years of residence in that country, will 
there be on the face of the descendants of that family a 
peculiar expression which will say to all beholders: 
there goes a Greek ? Why this miraculous prerogative 
which sets the Jew apart, and which prevents him from 
being confounded with any other of the sons of man ? 
There he stands, an eternal and never changed senti- 
nel, listening to the voice of prophecy sent to him by 
the faint echo of distant ages, and watching for the 
shadow of Jehovah as He passes, after having disowned 
His light and His substance in His Son. Truly there 
10 * 


226 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


is a divinity that hedges that people. Religion was 
their breath and life, and the worship of God was mixed 
np with every act of their daily and most common 
avocations. Their history is so entirely and so abso- 
lately theological, that you could not write one page of 
it, if that theology was suppressed. Jehovah was their 
King, and can no more be struck out of the records of 
their national existence than the sun from heaven. 
That history is but one long series of predictions and a 
concatenation of typical and foreshadowed events, from 
Adam and Eve the parents of mankind, down to the de- 
struction of Jerusalem by Titus and the final disper- 
sion of the Jews. If the importance of a nation is to 
be determined by the consequences to humanity result- 
ing from its existence and the part which it has per- 
formed, then, among the greatest nations of antiquity, 
there is none which does not sink into insignificance 
when compared with the Jews. 

“ Take them at the birth of Christ, for instance, and 
take the Romans at the same epoch. Put Christianity 
in one scale, and the victories, the legislation, the liter- 
ature and civilization of the Romans in the other, and 
see which will kick the beam. Which, for the last nine- 
teen centuries, has had the most influence on the des- 
tinies of our race ? The answer cannot be doubtful. 
Select Caesar as a type of the Roman people, and Christ 
as the representative of the Jewish, and see how in com- 
mensurably the one yields to the other. Look at all 
mankind, and tell me if you can discover any portion 
of it that possesses so signally as the Jews all the char- 
acteristics of predestination. The Romans and the Jews 
are the two grandest figures among the nations of the 
earth. They were the selected champions of the Al- 
mighty for a particular mission. That of the Romans 


FEJ^JVANjDO de lemos. 


227 


was, to bring the whole world into the unity of despot- 
ism and establish the centralization of physical and in- 
tellectual power for the spreading of pagan civilization. 
That mission being fulfilled, Kome passed away. That 
of the J ews seems to be, as predicted, to subject all na- 
tions to the unity of Christianity through and by Him 
whom they crucified and of whom they bear testimony 
in their very unbelief. That mission is not yet accom- 
plished. Hence the Jews still exist with undiminished 
vitality. God works slowly. Time is for Him as if it 
were not. At the end of the first century there were 
five hundred thousand Christians, and about six millions 
of Jews. In the nineteenth century it is estimated that 
there are three hundred millions of Christians, and still 
the same stationary number of J ews. This dispropor- 
tion will probably continue to progress until the time 
destined for the end, and until no testimony is any long- 
er necessary to establish that the man God was crucified. 
They are preserved intact, as witnesses and actors in the 
sublime drama of Calvary. In the meanwhile, the Jews 
show themselves more observant of their laws, religion 
and time-honored usages, than any other people would 
probably be of their own, if placed In similar circum- 
stances. We seldom or never hear among them of di- 
vorces, adulteries, and other oflfences which crowd our 
criminal courts with defendants against State prosecu- 
tions. Who ever saw a Jew beggar ? Who ever heard 
of a Jew not able to make a living'' How very few 
of them, if any, are carried to our charity hospitals ? 
They certainly appear to love one another much more 
effectually than we Christians love our brothers in 
Christ, and they lend to one another a more readily 
helping hand than we are prepared to do among our- 
selves. How that they are no longer kept in a state of 


228 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


degradation and oppression, they exhibit a remarkable 
aptitude for the cultivation of the arts and sciences. As 
bankers, traders, lawyers, and as the possessors of the 
secret of acquiring speedy wealth, we know their won- 
derful capacity ; and it must be acknowledged with much 
satisfaction, that, since they have ceased to be a univer- 
sal subject of contempt and reprobation, they have be- 
come much more liberal in their feelings and views, and 
that, if they reject the corner-stone of Christianity, they 
practice at least one of its fundamental principles — 
which is — charity toward all men. ‘ So Israel shall be 
saved.’ Let us hope for the accomplishment of this 
prophecy. This gTadual softening and humanizing of 
those whom Moses characterized as a ‘ stiff-necked ’ peo- 
ple, may be the beginning of that desired end.” 

Whilst he was delivering these sentiments, we stray- 
ed to a place where a tomb hardly raised itself above 
the weeds which grew around the modest structure. I 
stooped to read the inscription, and saw that it was to 
the memory of Papillon, a justice of the peace who had 
flourished during the days of my boyhood, and acquired 
some celebrity for his peculiar mode of exercising the 
powers intrusted to him. He had established as a judi- 
cial rule, and as a guide to his private and ofiicial con- 
science, that, as the altar must support the priest, so the 
court must support the judge, and, as he had no regular 
salary, but had to look to the costs for his living, he had 
to watch over this contingent and precarious revenue 
with a keen eye, and no hen was so solicitous about 
gathering its chicks under its wing, as Papillon was in 
gathering the costs in his court. He had with great sa- 
gacity and good luck selected as his constable a man 
named Pindar, whose skill in swelling the bill of fees 
in every suit was unparalleled. Pindar had the ad van 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


229 


tage of knowing everybody in J^ew Orleans, wliich 
knowledge was of invaluable advantage to the justice 
in deciding every case. That magistrate, shortly after 
taking his oath of office, had proclaimed that the ad- 
ministration of justice should be prompt, and that the 
law’s proverbial delays should be unknown to suitors 
before his tribunal, and therefore that he never would, as 
other judges do, “take time to consider.” He preferred 
giving judgment on the spot, when the arguments of 
counsel were fresh in his mind. “ After all,” he would 
say, taking a pinch of snuff from a capacious horn box, 
“ the first impulse is the best and the safest, and I will 
trust to that.” 

In accordance with this maxim and determination on 
his part, and in the interest of the public as he alleged, 
the justice, as soon as a suit had been gone through, 
wrote his judgment ex-ahrupto, invariably with this 
preamble : “ Considering the law and evidence applica- 
ble to this case,” etc., — and these sacramental words 
were followed by the usual conclusions for plaintiff or 
defendant, without at all stating the law and evidence 
on which the judgment was based. In fact, the justice 
had very little trouble in coming to those conclusions, 
for they were generally settled in his own mind before 
the trial of most cases, and by a very simple process. 
Every day a list of all the cases to be tried on that day 
was laid before him by constable Pindar, with whom 
he never failed to have a confidential interview before 
the opening of the court, and during which a short dia- 
logue ensued. “Well, Pindar,” he would say, “which of 
these rascally parties is most able to pay costs And, ac- 
cording to Pindar’s answer, Papillon wrote this memo- 
randum in his docket book: “KB., judgment to be giv- 
en in this case for defendant, or judgment for plaintiff.” 


230 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


Another peculiarity of Papillon’s administration of 
justice was : that he never refused an apphcation for a 
new trial. It increased the costs,” said he, and gave 
satisfaction to the applicant.” When the parties litigant 
were reported by Pindar to be of about equal pecuniary 
means to pay the costs, then Papillon would decide 
according to the merits of the case, if those merits were 
so clear as to leave no doubts in his mind. Otherwise, 
he consulted two peas which he always carried in his 
pocket. In his jokes with Pindar over a bottle of wine, 
ho used to call those two peas his “ associate justices on 
the bench.” One was white, and the other black. 
Thrusting his hand into his breeches pocket, Papillon 
drew at random one of the peas, whenever he was em- 
baiTassed about the side he was to decide for. Black 
was for defendant, white for plaintiff ; and he entered 
judgment accordingly by and with the advice of one 
or the other of his peas. Notwithstanding these judi- 
cial eccentricities Papillon was very popular ; for he 
had a splendid cook, and gave frequent dinners on 
Sundays. Every Saturday, he would say to his con- 
stable : “ Pindar, my friend, what is the condition of 
the larder?” By larder he meant the fee bill which 
had accrued during the week. Generally, the con- 
stable’s short answer was : “Fine, sir, extra fine.” 
Then the justice would take his seat with a face beam- 
ing with benevolence, and would say to such of the 
lawyers as practiced the most before him, and who, on 
that day of the week, took care to be present at the 
opening of the court, in anticipation of v/hat would be 
forthcoming : “ Gentlemen, the dignity and peace of 
the State require that there should be a good under- 
standing between the bar and the bench. Hence I 
invite you to dinner to-morrow at five o’clock, to dis- 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


231 


cuss, with all the learning aud the acumen which you 
are known to possess, the merits of a royal turbot, a 
fat capon, a corpulent turkey, a haunch of venison, or 
a sirloin of beef, as the case may be.” 

When Papillon died at last of an indigestion, the 
glory of those inferior courts of which he was the chief 
ornament departed for ever. He was soon followed to 
the grave by the incomparable and inconsolable Pindar, 
who succumbed to his grief and to his too frequent 
potations to drown it. Between the conflicting effects 
of grief and grog, that mirror of constables yielded the 
ghost, after refusing the most tempting offers on the 
part of other justices of the peace who strove to secure 
his services. He had heroically declared that he would 
serve no other man after having served Papillon. Al- 
though lean and hungry, he had remained true to that 
determination and to his devotion to the memory of 
that great magistrate. A rare example of fidelity in 
these dege. erate days ! 


CHAPTER XX. 


A. JURY TRIAL. — THE FORCE AND VITALITY OF PREJUDICES. 

“ I WILL relate to you,” said Tintin Calandro, ‘‘ an 
anecdote about a jury, which will be the fellow to that 
of your justice of the peace. I have it from a member 
of the ]Xew Orleans bar, a Frenchman by birth, whose 
name was Delpit, and who had acquired some reputa- 
tion in the management of criminal cases. In one of 
the parishes of the State one of his compatriots had 
married into a Creole family, and had quarreled with 
Cornelius, the brother of his wife. The Frenchman, 
having been naturalized, had been appointed by the 
Governor sheritf of the parish, and was ordered, one 
day, to serve a writ on his brother-in-law, who had con- 
ceived a deadly hostility to him. In the fulfillment of 
his duty he went to the house of that brother-in-law, 
and found him seated in the porch of the dwelling with 
a double-barreled gun in his hand, and evidently expect- 
ing the visit of the officer of the law. The sheriff 
opened the front gate to enter. 

‘‘ ‘ Stop,’ exclaimed Cornelius, ‘ one step more, and I 
fire.’ 

“ ‘ You know very well,’ said La Grange, (that was 
the Frenchman’s name,) ‘ that I come in obedience to 
an order of court. As sheriff of the parish I am com- 
pelled to serve this writ on you.’ 

“ Whilst thus speaking, he exhibited a paper and 
232 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


233 


advanced to deliver it. He was met by a discharge of 
the double-barreled gun which stretched him lifeless on 
the green sward. Cornelius remained quietly at home, 
as if nothing had happened. His friends and relations 
came to him and urged him to leave the country. It 
was clear that his case admitted of no defence, and 
nothing but flight could save him from the gallows. 
‘What do I care V replied the stolid fellow to all their 
entreaties. ‘ Hang me if you please, but I will not fly.’ 

“ Time to his word, he remained in his house until 
he was at last arrested and put in jail. Again his 
friends and family begged him, for their sake, if not 
for himself, to seek safety in flight. They could easily, 
they said, secure his escape. But he continued to be 
deaf to all their appeals. His constant reply was: 
‘ Hang me if you please, but I will not fly.’ Seeing 
his invincible obstinacy, they told him to employ at 
least a lawyer. ‘ Ho,’ said he, ‘ hang me if you please, 
but I will employ no lawyer.’ All those who took an 
interest in him, and who, being connected with him by 
blood, shrank from the disgrace of having one of their 
family die on a gibbet, were in despair, and, having 
determined to save him if possible, in spite of himself, 
resolved to employ counsel for him at their own ex- 
pense. They sent to the city a letter which brought 
up Delpit. 

“ ‘ I had received a good fee,’ said he, who himself 
liked to tell the anecdote, ‘ but, by heaven, what de- 
fence could I make ? So, when the trial came on, after 
my having challenged the most intelligent jurors and 
every foreigner, and accepted only those who, I pre- 
sumed, might be partial to my client, or be stupid 
enough to be befogged, and not know their right hand 
from the left, I thought I had done all that could be 


234 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


expected, for I had microscopicallj examined the in- 
dictment and the other proceedings, without finding 
the slightest fiaw. It was a desperate case, and, what 
made it worse, mj client peremptorily objected to the 
usual plea of insanity.’ 

‘ Gentlemen of the jury,’ said the prosecuting at- 
torney, after the evidence had been heard, ‘ the prisoner 
at the bar is accused of murder. His crime is so un- 
provoked, so cold-blooded, so unjustifiable and so av ell- 
established, and his guilt so undeniable, that it would 
be insulting your understanding, and wasting your time 
and that of the Court, to go into any argument on this 
occasion. I leave, therefore, the case in your hands 
without further observation. You will remember your 
oath and do justice to the State and the accused.’ 

‘‘ ‘ It became my turn to speak. I felt confused ; for 
there never had been a more atrocious and a less de- 
fensible murder. I talked about the moon and the 
sun, and the four elements, for I did not know what to 
say. But I had to say something, and I launched out 
into a roaring ocean of pathetic nonsense. I tried to 
stun and distract the judge and jury with a cataract of 
words and a whirlwind of passion. When I had done 
and was endeavoring to recover my breath, the District 
Attorney, who conducted the prosecution for the State, 
rose and said dryly :’ 

“ ‘ Gentlemen of the jury, the law and evidence in 
this case have been laid before you. The eloquent 
counsel who has just addressed you has not been able, 
notwithstanding his Avell-known skill in managing af- 
fairs of this nature, to present to you the shadow of a 
defence in the defenceless case of which he has taken 
charge. He has in reality attempted none, as you may 
have observed. What he has said, merely because he 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


235 


was bound to say something, needs no refutation — nay 
— is not susceptible of any, as lie has offered nothing 
substantial and tangible; for his words were but empty 
sounds, signifying nothing ; and, to do him justice, let 
us admit that it could not be otherwise. As I have 
said before, I submit the case without further com- 
ment.’ 

The judge, in a short charge, echoed the language of 
the District Attorney, and delivered the indictment to 
the foreman whom he appointed. Every body expected 
a verdict on the spot. But no. To the astonishment 
of all, the jury asked to retire to their room of delib- 
eration, to which they were conducted by the sheriff. 
There they remained an hour. Wliat had been astonish- 
ment at first, rose to the highest pitch of amazement. 
The Court, its officers, the members of the bar, and the 
numerous spectators who had witnessed the trial had a 
blank look, which was beginning to assume a ludic- 
rous aspect, when at last the jury made their appear- 
ance. Their names were called, the twelve answered. 
The foreman handed the verdict on which they had 
agreed to the clerk, who read aloud : ‘ ISTot guilty.’ 

“ ‘ What ! ’ exclaimed the judge, who was a natural- 
ized foreigner, ‘ this is not possible. Mr. clerk, read 
that verdict again.’ 

“ ‘ bTot guilty,’ repeated the clerk in a more sonor- 
ous voice. 

The judge became pale with indignation, and shout- 
ed fiercely: ‘Gentlemen of the jury, you are discharg- 
ed,’ adding between his teeth in a less audible tone, 
‘ and may the devil take you to where you ought to 
.be!’ 

“ What a triumph for the counsel of the accused ! ” 
continued Tintin Calandro. “ He swelled with self- 


236 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


importance, and addressed the warmest congratulations 
to his client, who received them rather coldly. But 
something puzzled him. What had he said which had 
produced so marvelous a result ? He was determined 
to discover it, for it might he of immense service to 
him in other cases of a similar nature. Impressed with 
the importance of obtaining the desired information, 
he ran after the foreman of the jury, whom he discov- 
ered at a distance slowly wending his way home. He 
thanked him for the verdict rendered in behalf of his 
client, and asked him as a favor to tell him which of 
his arguments had induced the jury to acquit the ac- 
cused. The foreman hesitated, and tried to avoid an- 
swering the inquiry. The man of law became more 
pressing. 

‘ You had better not be so urgent,’ said the impor 
tuned juror, ‘ for my answer might offend you.’ 

“ ‘ Offend me !’ exclaimed the astonished attorney. 

‘ That is impossible. If I insist so much on your do- 
ing me the favor to gratify my curiosity, it is because 
I expect to obtain information which may be of conse- 
quence to me professionally. Therefore, pray, tell me, 
whicli of my arguments acted on you so powerfully V 

“ ‘ Pish ! pish !’ grunted the foreman, whose polite- 
ness at last gave way to his impatience, ‘ since you will 
have it, let me tell you that the jury did not pay the 
slightest attention to your address to them. We ac- 
quitted the prisoner, because we could not put up with 
the idea that a Creole should be hung for a French- 
man.’ 

Here is certainly,” said Tintin, rubbing liis sharp 
nose, as striking an instance of prejudice as I ever • 
knew.” 

“ I admit it, Tintin Calandro,” I replied, and what 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


237 

astonishes me, is the existence of the same feeling 
among all the descendants of Europeans in America 
against the source whence they came. ' The Cubans, 
the Mexicans and the inhabitants of South America, 
even of unmixed Spanish blood, detest the Spaniards. 
The natives of the French West India Islands, and of 
St. Domingo in particular, and of Louisiana and Can- 
ada, have no very decided sympathy for the Frenchmen 
who settle among them ; and the Anglo-Saxon Ameri- 
cans are not supposed to entertain much partiality for 
the English.” 

‘‘ There may be several reasons to be alleged for it,” 
said Tintin Calandro, but I will not venture to give 
even a single one. The witty and sage Fontenelle 
once observed, that, if he had his hand full of truths, 
he would clutch them tight, and not allow one, if he 
could, to shp out between his fingers, because he had 
no taste for martyrdom. In this way he managed to 
keep egotistically free from aU troubles and to live a 
hundred years. A lesson to you and to me.” 

“ Tintin,” I answered, “prejudice is inseparable from 
human nature. All the philosophers of the world will 
not eradicate it, and they themselves are not free from 
its sway. There is not one man whose mind, like his 
body, does not cast a shadow, and the stronger the light 
which falls on either, the stronger the shadow. Preju- 
dice is the shadow which projects from the mind. But 
Louisiana is not the only field where prejudices have a 
luxurious growth. Follow me a thousand miles or 
more to the west, where I shall put some actors on the 
stage. Two members of Congress from this State were 
traveling once through Ohio, on their way to Washing- 
ton City. One of them was an Irishman by birth, the 
other a native of Louisiana. Tlie coach in which they 


238 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


were, broke a wheel on a part of the road which ran 
through a thinly inhabited section of the country. The 
passengers were informed that the detention would last 
several hours, so that the two gentlemen from Louisi- 
ana determined to explore the environs of the place 
where the accident had happened, and seek shelter 
against a cold drizzling rain which had set in. After 
wandering for some time, they arrived at a log-cabin 
embedded in a cluster of trees. There they found a 
woman whose flaxen hair and lily complexion sliowed 
her to be purely Saxon ; but they were astonished at 
the mahogany color and kinky hair of her young chil- 
dren. Whilst they were wondering at this phenome- 
non, a big strapping Hercules of a negro entered the 
cabin, and was introduced to her visitors by the woman 
as her husband. After a while, the black man went 
away. The native of Louisiana and the native of Ire- 
land were shocked, and could not refrain from express- 
ing their feelings to the Saxon female, who, thereupon, 
showed great distress of mind and began shedding a 
flood of teai’s. Pained at the effect which they had 
produced by their reproaches, and, reflecting that it 
was but poorly rewarding the woman for her hospitality, 
they tried to soothe her, and even to find an excuse for 
what she had done, by laying it at the door of the ed- 
ucation she had received, and attributing her want of 
self-respect to the absence of a prejudice, which ex- 
isted in them with a vigor entirely due perhaps to cir- 
cumstances. 

‘‘ ‘ Do not distress yourselves about me, gentlemen,’ 
said the woman. ‘ It is not over wdiat I have done 
that I am crying, but about my sister, who has done a 
great deal worse,’ and she w^ent on weeping more pro- 
fusely than ever. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 239 

^ Good heavens !’ exclaimed the horrified gentlemen. 
‘ What can she have done V 

“ ‘ O Lord ! O Lord !’ ejaculated the woman, blub- 
bering and wringing her hands. ‘ Will you believe it, 
gentlemen ? She has married an Irishman !’ ” 

Tintin laughed. “ Certain people,” he said, com- 
plain of the prejudices of the white inhabitants of the 
Southern States against the negro ; and yet the negro 
is the most prejudiced of all human beings. What he 
despises the most on earth, is what he calls the ‘ white 
trash’ that is imported from Europe; and it is that 
very white trash — it is those poor hewers of wood and 
drawers of water in a distant country, where they know 
nothing of negro nature and of the condition of that 
portion of the human family, who feel the most sym- 
pathy for the imaginary sufferings of those imported 
sons of Africa! Keally, this is a funny and a sad 
world. One day, I saw a young n egress, evidently a 
native of Louisiana, and as evidently a spoiled child of 
the land, black though she was and a slave, standing 
like a block of ebony at the owner of St. Peter and 
Poyal streets. She had a basket on her head, which 
she, with graceful ease, kept in equilibrium, and she 
held her arms akimbo on a beautifully shaped waist. 
She was very cleanly dressed, and handsome for one of 
her race. She was staring at a long line of dirty Ger- 
man emigrants who had just landed, and who, two by 
two, were ascending Royal street. Her eyes were 
flashing, her lips curled, and her nostrils dilated with 
scorn. She reminded me of the statue of Apollo look- 
ing at tlie serpent Python, and preparing to let loose 
his unerring shaft at the monster — which shows what 
far-fetched comparisons sometimes present themselves 
to the mind. Spying one of her class on the opposite 


240 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


side of the street, she hallooed to her and said : ‘ Gos- 

sip dear, what cattle are these? Whence do they 
come, and where do they go?’ Never shall I forget 
the scene. Mrs. Siddons herself could not have thrown 
more contempt into her voice. On another occasion, 
in a political riot which occurred on a day of election, 
an individual was killed before the house of a gentle- 
man, who related the anecdote to me. ‘ I looked out,’ 
he said, ‘ and saw the dead body stretched out in the 
street right in front of my door. At that moment my 
dinner was announced to be in readiness. I was so 
shocked by what I had seen, that, instead of going to 
my dinner, I stepped into my little garden back of the 
house, which I paced thoughtfully, with my head hang- 
ing down. My cook, a small, soft-hearted and soft- 
spoken colored woman, came up to me in a sort of 
stealthy and cat-like fashion, and, in an affectionate 
whining tone which hardly rose above a whisper, said 
to me: master! master! Don’t take it so much 

to heart. That thing, after all, that lies yonder, is 
nothing but a Dutchman.’ 

What a tragi-comedy,” continued Tintin, “ the 
life of man is ! I wonder which predominates in it — 
the horrible, or the ridiculous ! And I wonder still 
more that any philosopher who looks at the hideous 
spectacle, does not take refuge like me in a cemetery.” 

“ Men of your keen sensibilities and of your turn of 
mind,” I replied, had better keep out of the vortex 
of the world, which would make of their light-skinned 
bodies but one sore. It is otherwise for those to whom 
nature has given a bad heart, or no heart at all, a sharp 
intellect, a good stomach and a plentiful stock of per- 
severance and energy. Such a physical and mental 
organization is said to be an infallible element of sue- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


241 


cess. It qualifies its possessor to meet with advantage 
the multifarious and ever- varying exigencies and trials 
of life, which, for the greater portion of mankind, is a 
death struggle for bread. In all professions and pur- 
suits he who is the most adroit gladiator, and who 
wields his weapons the most skillfully, has the best 
chance. For most men, principally among the educa- 
ted, success is the sole aim and object of existence — 
that kind of success which secures wealth, worldly 
honors and pleasures. If that is the case, as I suppose 
it will be admitted to be, then success becomes with 
them a question merely of mathematical calculations, 
with which the rigid principles of virtue and the im- 
pulses of a kind heart must not be permitted to inter- 
fere ; and yet it cannot be denied that even those cal- 
culations, accurately precise as they may be, ai-e subor- 
dinated to that mysterious and incomprehensible agency 
called good, or bad luck. But success, whatever may 
be its cause and the qualities which secure it, is so daz- 
zling, and covers imperfections and even crimes with a 
sheet of light so powerful, that it blinds the eye of the 
multitude to every thing else than to its overpowering 
effulgence. Mankind may quarrel with the Deity, but 
never with the idol of success, before which it is al- 
ways prostrated and burning incense. Therefore why 
should he who aims at the success which procures 
wealth, fame, rank, power, care for really possessing 
virtues and merits of any kind, when they will surely 
be supposed to exist in him as soon as success is 
achieved 

“ This is a misanthropical and incorrect view of the 
question,” replied Tintin Calandro. “ Success attends 
the good as well as the wicked. Success and fiiilure, 
joy and happiness, contentment and discontent, with 

11 


242 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


miseries of all sorts, are showered here and there upon 
the heads of naen in the same manner that rain falls 
occasionally, and apparently at random, over the sur- 
face of the earth. A breeze springs over the bosom of 
the ocean. The sails of one ship will catch it, and those 
of another will not. This one will arrive in time to sell 
her cargo at an enormous profit. The other will be too 
late in the market, and will meet with nothing but dis- 
aster and ruin. But what of that ? Do you remem- 
ber Falstatf on the battle field, pointing to the dead 
body of Sir Walter Blunt and saying : ‘ There is honor 
for you.’ Well, I say in my turn,” and he pointed at 
the same time to a tomb, “There is success for you. 
Success, or no success, have the same end. What mat- 
ters then the temporary difierence, fiitting like a shadow, 
which may exist between them ?” 

“ Whose tomb is it ?” I inquired. 

“ That of a judge who died lately,” replied Tintin. 
“ Do you know any thing of him ?” 

I looked at the marble slab. “ Oh ! oh !” I exclaim- 
ed, “ I can give you, Tintin Calandro, a sketch of his 
life, if you desire it.” 

“ Do so, I pray. I am at leisure, and may derive 
some information, moral and philosophical, from your 
narrative, which will give me food for refiection.” 


CHAPTEK XXL 


THE OLD CHIEF-JUSTICE AND HIS BLACK SERVANT, TOM. 

‘‘ There reposes one,’’ I said, “ who lived eighty-four 
years, and who, from an humble threshold rose pa- 
tient labor and by slow steps to wealth and reputation. 
His name was Francis Xavier Martin, and he was born 
in Marseilles in France, as the inscription tells you. 
He was poor, and, when only fifteen years old, he had 
the energy to leave his home and family, and go to a 
distant land with the hope of bettering his prospects in 
life. He came to the British province's of JSTorth Amer- 
ica, which were then in the beginning of their struggle 
with the mother country for independence. This youth 
joined the rebels with the expectation of rising to fame 
and command, like all those who attempt a military 
career. An incident destroyed all his illusions. Being, 
on one occasion, sent to reconnoitre, he came back spur- 
ring his horse to its utmost speed, and shouting lustily : 
‘ The enemy is upon us.’ The troops rushed to arms, 
thinking themselves surprised, and, with the heroic de- 
termination to .die, or conquer, advanced in the direction 
pointed out by the scout. Stern resolution was on ev- 
ery soldier’s face, for every soldier knew that he was to 
meet a foe worthy of his steel, and that a beloved coun- 
try looked for salvation to the serried ranks and glitter- 
ing bayonets of its sons. But what peals of laughter 

( 243 ) 


' 244 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS, 


shoqk the sides of the heroes of the hour, when they 
encountered a long line of red flannel shirts hung up 
by washerwomen to dry in the sun ! Young Martin, 
who, not being yet bronzed by the buffetings of life, 
was keenly sensitive to ridicule like a true Frenchman, 
fairly ran away from the jeers of his toiTnentors. The 
fact is, that he was so near-sighted, that he could not see 
farther than the tip of his nose. This incident took 
place > in Virginia, ai>d Martin, although gifted with 
very little imagination, fancying that he still heard 
in his wake the shouts of derision of a whole army, 
kept on his flight until he reached l^orth Carolina. 
There he found himself without those government ra- 
tions on which he had existed, and as threadbare as a 
fleeced lamb. I must live some way or other, thought 
he ; and, after much anxious cogitation, the best thing 
the poor fellow found to do, was to engage to carry the 
mail on horseback from place to place through a certain 
district of l^orth Carolina, in deflance of mud, cold and 
rain, and for a mere pittance that hardly enabled him 
to keep soul and body together. To improve the strait- 
ened condition to which he was reduced, he determined 
to trade, and, as he had no capital beyond a few dollars 
scraped together by hard savings, he began with pro- 
curing stale newspapers as a gift, or at a great discount 
on the original price, after they had been read by the 
subscribers in the town from which he started on his 
mail-carrying expeditions. These he sold on the way 
to such people as wished to know how the world wag- 
ged. When passing by some farmer seated on a stile, 
or when arriving at a village, he would shout : ‘ Great 
news ! great news ! Battle at Trenton 1 Immense 
slaughter at Brandywine I’ or as the case might be, he 
would announce some other startling event. The next 


FE/^N-ANBO BE LEMOS. 


245 


step np the ladder for this aspiring youth, was to be 
employed as a compositor in a printing establishment* 
There he worked ^with indefatigable industry at the 
types intrusted to him, whilst his mind was diligently 
improved by study in his scant leisure hours, and dur- 
ing those lie stole from the time which nature, if listen- 
ed to, would have allotted to sleep. After a while, he 
became one of the editors of a small paper, and, having 
had the good luck to win the golden opinion of a gi-eat 
jurist of I^orth Carolina, he was received as a student 
of law in the office of pne eminently qualified to guide 
him. 

“ He was in due time admitted to the bar, and, hav- 
ing a clear, strong and logical intellect, he could not 
but become a sound and learned lawyer. An eloquent, 
or even a pleasant speaker he could not be. Ho one 
can be an orator without possessing the glowing soul 
and the fervid imagination of a poet. Martin had none 
of those glorious attributes of the choicest specimen 
of human organization. He was as dry as a hard baked 
brick-bat. Being known, however, as a safe and trusty 
counsellor-at-law, he made a -decent living, and won the 
esteem of the community among which he resided. 
When President Washington visited Horth Carolina, 
he was on the committee charged with the duty of 
receiving that great man with appropriate honors. It 
was one of the circumstances of his life of which he 
loved to talk. When Washington, whom he had never 
seen before, showed himself to his admiring eyes in a 
coach and four, with that majestic bearing which is at- 
tributed to kings, and which made that illustrious in- 
dividual look like the very incarnation of intensified 
aristocrac}^, the young Frenchman, who had been dream- 
ing of Cincinnatus with spade and plough, and dirt- 


246 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


stained, hard-fisted hands, was rather disconcerted. The 
committee conducted this Louis the fourteenth of re- 
publicanism to his apartments, but, before entering 
them, Washington said with a smile to those who rever- 
ently surrounded him : ‘ Gentlemen, I am in the habit 
of attending to the comforts of my horses before think- 
ing of mine. Please therefore to be so kind as to lead 
me to the stables.’ And to the stables the founder of 
an empire went with a measured and augnst step, not as^ 
sumed, but prescribed to him by nature. With placid 
dignity he patted his horses, and gave the minutest 
directions to his groom, much to the edification of the 
astonished committee. When Louisiana was ceded to 
the United States, Martin came to the newly acquired 
territory, where he thought that a fertile field was 
open to him. His anticipations were realized, for he 
became attorney-general, and afterward chief-justice 
of the State of Louisiana. He was an upright, fearless, 
and just man, and, being a thorough master of the 
common and the civil law, a combination of knowledge 
seldom found in any jurist, he became an honor to the 
bench, and to the State which had adopted him. His 
decisions in many important cases are worthy of being 
forever remembered. They will remain permanent 
ir onuments of his abilities and legal erudition, and of 

sterling honesty which was always above temptation 
; nd suspicion; but they lack tliat judicial eloquence 
vhich is admired, for instance, in Lord Mansfield. 
Judge Martin wrote two histories, one of Horth Caro- 
lina and the other of Louisiana, which I have read 
with pleasure and much profit, but they are as lifeless 
as the minutes and records of proceedings in a court 
of justice. 

‘‘ Judge Martin was a man rather below the ordinary 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS, 


24:7 


size, with a large and expressive head. He was so near- 
sighted that, when he read or wrote, his robust and 
fully developed nose touched the paper and sometimes 
was tipped with ink. He walked along the streets of 
Hew Orleans with his eyes closed, and with tottering 
and hesitating steps, feeling his way like a blind man, 
absorbed in thought, probably lost in utter darkness, or 
at best guiding himself only by the twilight of his 
imperfect vision, running one of his hands abstractedly 
over the side walls of the houses, mechanically and un- 
consciously twirling round with his index the iron 
catches intended to hold fast the outside shutters of 
wdndows and doors, muttering to himself half formed 
sentences, and frequently ejaculating in a dolorous under- 
tone these words : ‘ poor me ! poor me !’ He was 
always shabbily and sometimes dirtily dressed, for he 
could not see with his own eyes what was the condition 
of his clothes, which, after all, he had a profound aver- 
sion to renew, being of an exti’emely penurious dis- 
position. He had to trust to his black housekeeper for 
information as to the necessities of his wardrobe, and 
any one who knows the carelessness of that incorrigibly 
shiftless race, can be at no loss to form for himself an 
idea of the peculiar physiognomy of the judge’s ap- 
parel. His uncouth and odd figure used to attract the 
attention of the juvenile blackguards of the city, who 
loved to serve him with tricks w^hich the old gentleman 
bore with philosophic serenity, for he never permitted 
his displeasure to go beyond a slight expression of dis- 
gust manifested by something which partook of the 
snort and the grunt. He never recognized any of his 
acquaintances or friends, who passed by him in the 
streets in perfect incognito. Frequently, on address- 
ing him, they had to name themselves, when he did not 


248 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


know them bj the sound of their voice. Everywhere, 
and invariably, Judge Martin kept his eyes closed, and 
very few, I believe, ever caught a glimpse of their color. 
His conversation was argumentative, and he was fond, 
after the Socratic fashion, of proceeding by questions, 
which he accompanied with a grunt. Questions after 
questions, logically linked together, each one more 
shrewd and insidious than the other, and leading to 
some conclusions to which he vigorously drove the per- 
son interrogated, whilst he emitted grunt after grunt, 
was the sum total of his colloquial powers. He was 
not destitute of humor, and relished a joke. I am not 
sure that he did not prefer a coarse one. On such oc- 
casions, when pleased, he showed his satisfaction by 
laughing after a fashion peculiar to himself. He threw 
his heavy and massive head back, opened his mouth 
wide without uttering a sound, and drew up to his 
bushy eyebrows the deep wrinkles of his face. There 
w^as something striking in that silent laugh. When he 
met with a knotty point of law which perplexed him, 
his habit was to drop in, as it were in a friendly way, 
at the offices of tlmse lawyers for whom he had the 
most consideration, and who were not interested in the 
case he had under advisement. After a few minutes 
of desultory conversation, he wmuld slyly approach the 
subject which he had in mind. ‘Well, counsellor,’ he 
would say, ‘ suppose such a point, what would be youi 
views on it?’ Whatever opinion the counsellor might 
express, the judge would take the other side, raise ob- 
jections after objections, insinuate plausible doubts, 
puzzle the counsellor, and, after having pumped his 
antagonist dry, would leave his office with his usual 
grunts, and with ejaculations of : ‘ poor me, poor me, 
as soon as he was again in the street and thought him- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


249 


self alone. Thus lie went round, repeating the same 
scene until he was satisfied wdth the result of his in- 
vestigations. When, after having dnlj weighed a case, 
he found that the arguments for and against were 
equally balanced, it is said that he wrote two judg- 
ments adverse to each other, which he would read to 
his associates, and between which he desired them to 
decide, as he was ready to adopt either of them as cor- 
rect. It is related that, one day, he had thus prepared 
two judgments, one for the plaintiff and the other for the 
defendant. The decisjon for the defendant was adopt- 
ed by the court. As chance would have it, the two 
judgments got mixed up, and Judge Martin, to the 
dismay of the court, delivered from the bench the one 
which was in favor of the plaintiff, and which had been 
rejected. Tlie defendant, either from his own impulse, 
or from a hint which he received, made an application 
for a rehearing, which w’^as granted, and the error was 
rectified. 

‘‘ A great imperfection in that excellent judge and 
honest man was his extreme avarice. It was jocosely 
said, that, on principles of economy, he had never mar- 
ried. He lived in the vicinity of the city in a brick- 
yard which he owned, and hardly spent two hundred 
dollars a year out of a salary of five thousand. His 
household was composed of an old black man and his 
wife, and of Tom, his confidential body servant, carrier 
and driver, for the judge sported a rickety antediluvian 
buggy drawn by a one-eyed, half-starved horse. In 
regulating the economy of his household the judge had 
said to his black cook and to her husband : ‘ I intend to 
be a generous master. I will furnish you with a room, 
but you must feed yourselves and supply my table with 
decent fare, beside cleaning the house in which we all 
11 * 


250 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS, 


reside, and wMch is jours as well as mine. This is all I 
require of jou ; the rest of the time is jours, and what- 
ever monej jon maj make and save after having nour- 
ished me, and kept m j clothes in a good state of repairs, 
is jour absolute property.’ Such was the peculiar idio- 
sjncracj of the judge, that I am convinced he thought 
himself verj generous on that" occasion. It maj easily 
be imagined what fare he had, and what an infinite va- 
riety of stains and patches adorned his garments, which 
reallj were a nondescript cunosity. Fortunatelj, he 
had the appetite and the digestive powers of an ostrich, 
and could not distinguish between a rotten cabbage 
stump and a luxurious cauliflower. When he dined 
out, he swallo^ved with indiscriminate voracity all that 
was piled upon his plate. His apartment never was 
swept, his scanty furniture never dusted, and tlie 
spider festooned his ceilings with its airj draperj, se- 
curelj conscious, I presume, of reaching old age in un- 
disturbed repose. From this den the miser would come 
out, jear after jear, to ascend the bench in the hall of 
justice, where he was transformed into an impartial, 
high-minded and inflexible judge, far above courting 
popularity, shedding on the subject before him the rays 
of his luminous but cold intellect, and pouring the treas- 
ures of his vast erudition with a profusion and appro- 
priateness which won the confidence and excited the 
admiration of an appreciative bar, largely composed of 
men of exalted talents. It was no longer Shjlock, but 
Daniel come to judgment. 

“ Tom, the body servant of Martin, was as much of a 
character in his way as the personage he waited upon, 
and was well known throughout the State ; for he never 
failed to accompany the judge in his annual circuit. 
The slave looked on his master as a sort of helpless 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


251 


grown-up baby of whom he had to take care, and for 
wdiose safety and welfare he was accountable to the 
State, of which that master, as he proudly knew, was 
one of the highest dignitaries. Tom very naturally 
came to the conclusion, that, notwithstanding the color 
of his skin, he was a man of much importance, and even 
assumed authority over the great personage whom he 
considered as his ward. For instance, when at home, 
where Tom had full sway, the judge rose from his seat, 
Tom would sometimes say : ‘ Where are you going, sir V 

‘ I am going to take a walk.’ ‘ What ! without 

consulting me ! Do n’t you know it is raining ?’ or — 

‘ Do n’t you know that you have walked enough to-day ? 
Sit down, sir, sit down ;’ and taking his master by the 
shoulder, Tom would gently force him back to his seat. 
The judge was overheard once, saying to his faithful 
companion in a hotel where he had stopped : 

‘ Tom, Tom, have I dined to-day ? Humph ! humph ! 
humph !’ three grunts as usual. 

‘‘ ‘ What ! what !’ replied Tom in a scolding tone. 
‘What a question, sir? Are you getting clear out of 
your mind ? Do n’t you recollect you ate a whole duck ?’ 

“ ‘ Oh 1 very well then, very well, all ’s right. 
Humph ! humph ! humph !’ Three grunts. 

“ One day Tom said to him : ‘ I want a whip for our 
buggy.’ 

“ ‘ Well, Tom, if you want a whip, buy a whip, of 
course. I do not see any objection to it.’ 

“ After a while, Tom came to him, whip in hand. 
‘ Master,’ he said, ‘ I want a dollar.’ 

“ ‘ A dollar from me ! Monstrous I What for ? On 
what tenable ground do you establish your petition ?’ 

“ ‘ To pay for the whip.’ 

“‘Why, Tom, I thought you were a man of sense. 


252 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


Did you not buy tlie whip for your own accommoda- 
tion 

‘‘ ‘ I bought it for your buggy, sir.’ 

‘ My buggy ! Our buggy, you mean. Y Du called it 
yourself our buggy. Don’t you ride in it as well as I 
do ? Tush ! Don’t trouble me any more about it.’ 

Tom might have replied : Master, if we are in part- 
nership, you ought at least to pay for one half of the 
whip. Tom might have had some other points to urge, 
but did not think of them, and failed to argue his mas- 
ter into recognizing the justice of his claim. Besides, 
opinionated and conceited as he was, there was one sub- 
ject on which he never hazarded a domestic conflict — 
which was — anything bordering on the law — anything 
concerning legal rights or claims. ^ I can rule the old 
man, as my master,’ Tom. would say, ‘ but as judge, it 
is no go. He is too mighty awful on de law. He 
can’t be beaten there by anybody. God Himself would 
think twice of it before fighting my master on de civil 
law, de common law, and de criminal law. Better not, 
sir, better not’ When thus delivering himself, Tom 
looked perfectly awe-struck and reverently sank his voice. 

“ This eccentric black man possessed a good deal of 
sense and a good deal of humor. Judge Martin, being 
once on a judicial tour throughout the State, was occu- 
pying the same room with one of his associates on the 
bench, who w^as an Irishman by birth and a gentleman 
of fine abilities, a scholar and a wit. Tom, who was in 
attendance on them, now and then had a word to put in 
with all the freedom of speech of a privileged servant. 
‘ Tom, Tom,’ said the judge, ‘ where did you get the 
expression you have just now used. Have you not been 
long enough with me to learn to speak pure EnglisTi? 
Do you intend to disgrace me, sir 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


25a 


“ ‘ I beg pardon, master,’ replied Tom. ^ Have the 
kindness to excuse me. If I talk broken English, it is 
due to my having lately kept bad company and he 
glanced with a mischievous smile on his thick lips at the 
Irish gentleman, who relished the joke at his expense, 
and who gave it circulation by repeating it. 

“ Tom thought himself very learned in the law, al- ’ 
though as I have already said, it was the only subject 
on which he never ventured to enter into a conflict with 
his master, and was frequently heard expounding it with 
the most comical gravity to his ebony friends, for whom 
his word had indisputable authority. Poor Tom ! He 
died in a distant part of the State, where he had follow- 
ed his master who left him there, when taken sick, as 
he could not spare time to wait for his recovery. The 
tavern-keeper, at whose house he had departed from this 
world, knowing the peculiar relations which existed be- 
tween Tom and the judge, had him decently buried, 
and sent to the latter a bill of twenty dollars for the 
costs of the funeral. The judge broke out into the 
fiercest grunts he had ever been heard to emit, and re- 
fused to pay the bill, because the expenses had been un- 
authorized and excessive ; and one dollar, wdiich he ten- 
dered, was, he said, all that could be required for the 
burying of a negro. The landlord sued the judge in 
the parish where Tom had died ; but the judge excep- 
ted to the jurisdiction of the court on the ground of his 
being domiciliated in the Parish of Orleans. The plea 
was sustained, and the plaintiff was thrown out of court 
with costs. Pitiful human nature ! "What shades and 
lights there are in the character of a man ! And mast 
they not be all faithfully, although regretfully, repro- 
duced, to give a correct knowledge of the individual to 
be portrayed, and to adorn a tale, or point a moral ? 


254 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


Cliief- Justice Martiu (for lie bad readied that dis- 
tinction) had resigned on account of his growing infirm- 
ities, before he died at the age of eighty-four, leaving 
to a younger brother his whole fortune amounting to 
about five hundred thousand dollars, which he had slow- 
ly and patiently acquired cent after cent, by depriving 
himself of every comfort during a long life. Some years 
before his death, the chief-justice had summoned from 
France his brother with the intention of making him 
his heir. That brother was a sexagenarian bachelor, 
although the chief-j ustice could never see in him but the 
boy with whom he had parted more than half a century 
ago. He called him by the familiar, childish name of 
Mi mi, a diminutive, no doubt, and an appellation which 
dated from the nursery. Mi mi operated a revolution 
in the way of the chief-justice’s living. He compelled 
him to have decent lodgings, and to keep a substan- 
tial table afibrding a wholesome variety of food, and en- 
livened with the presence and use of wine. The chief- 
justice grunted more than ever, and even gave vent to 
plentiful groans and remonstrances, but Mimi, who had 
some pecuniary means of his own and who felt his in- 
dependence, threatened to return to France if he was 
not allowed to regulate the household as he pleased. 
The chief-justice, conscious of the helplessness of old 
age and isolation^ and having Tom no longer at his el- 
bow, succumbed at last and surrendered at discretion. 
But he would frequently complain of the extravagance 
of his sexagenarian brother, and say piteously : ‘ That 
prodigal boy will be the cause of my ruin, and will 
send me to die in the charity hospital.’ 

‘‘The chief-justice, knowing from his own judicial 
experience that the more lengthy a testamentary will 
is, the more liable it is to give rise to litigation and to 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


255 


be declared null and void, had taken care to make his 
with Spartan brevity and to bequeath in three lines, 
under his own handwriting, all his earthly possessions 
to his brothel’. And yet a law suit sprang from that 
instrument, short as it was ! It was alleged that the 
chief-justice, having become entirely blind, could not 
have written the will himself. But there was the hand- 
writing so well known to all. There was the signature 
to which every member of the bar could swear. A 
fact is a fact, and there was the fact. It was further 
alleged that the bequest of the chief-justice’s fortune 
to his brother, who had become a naturalized citizen 
hve years after his arrival, was a fraud intended against 
the State, which was entitled by an existing law to ten 
per cent, on all inheritances claimed by foreigners ; 
that the universal legatee was a mere trustee who was 
to divide the greater portion of the legacy among 
numerous nephews and nieces whom the testator had 
in France, and who would be the real heirs to be bene- 
fited by the wiU without paying what was due to the 
State ; and that the apparent legacy of the whole for- 
tune to one of the heirs only, because he was natural- 
ized, was what is called in law a fidei comrnissum, 
which was a subterfuge invalidating the will. But 
Mirni, being interrogated on oath, declared that he was 
a hona fide legatee, and that he had made no promise 
to the testator, and was under no obligation to divide 
among the other heirs what he inherited to their detri- 
ment. Judgment was rendered in favor of the will, 
and thus the chief- justice was successful even after 
death as he had been throughout life. Posthumous 
honors also were rendered to him. His bust in marble, 
resting on a handsome column, adorns the hall of the 
Supreme Court. It is no ordinary face. What strongly 


258 


FER.VANDO DE LEMOS. 


marked features, and how indicative to a physiognomist 
of the character of the man who possessed them ! The 
dark side of that character was avarice and want of 
charity. The chief-justice had been very poor, and 
entertained a morbid apprehension of falling back into 
tliat dreadful condition. Hence he clung to a dollar 
with as much desperate tenacity as a drowning man to 
any thing which his hand seizes. lie had made his 
way without any pecuniary assistance from any body. 
Why should not others do the same ? If they did not, 
it was because they were worthless. Let all work and 
economize as he had, and there would be no indigence. 
As to contributions to religious missions, to the erection 
of churches, or to the propagation of morality in some 
shape or other, it was all a humbug in his estimation — 
a thing got up for the benefit of a few designing moun- 
tebanks and to soothe the sentimental nerves of a pack 
of old women. With regard to establishing or sup- 
porting schools, colleges and literary or scientific insti- 
tutions with the assistance of his purse, he thought 
that he was under no obligation whatever to make any 
contribution. He liad educated himself. Why should 
not others do likewise ? Hence, during his long career, 
he showed himself incapable of any charitable impulse, 
and always turned a deaf ear to applications for dona- 
tions of any sort and for any purpose ; nor did he, even 
on his death-bed, as his will proves, think of giving 
any thing as a souvenir to friendship, or as a tribute to 
the poor. He never knew the exquisite luxury of re- 
lieving distress. He rather chose never to expose him- 
self to the sharp tooth of ingratitude. He must, 
however, have enjoyed, I suppose, the gratification 
afforded by the pride of success, for it cannot be denied 
that he was the sole architect of his own fortune,” 


CHAPTER XXn. 


BETTER BE i. PIOIfEER THAI^ A LAAVYER. — TINTIN CAJjANDRO’S 
HALLUCrNATIONS. 

Such instances of successful industry aud perse- 
verance are numerous in this new country,” said Tintin 
Calandro. I know one in point and quite as. remark- 
able as the one you have related. A young Swiss, 
called Emmanuel Brie, came here in 1803, shortly 
after the cession of Louisiana to the United States. 
He Avas of a good family and classically educated. He 
brought letters of introduction to some of the most 
distinguished members of the He ay Orleans bar, who 
advised him to adopt their profession, and who offered 
him every facility to enable him to folloAA’ that advice. 

‘ Thanks for your kindness,’ said Emmanuel, ‘ but 
I will be a farmer. I think Avith Cicero, that of all 
the professions and pursuits which may bring Avealth 
to man, the best, the most fruitful, the most pleasant, 
the most worthy of a free man, is that of the farmer.’ 

‘‘ His friends laughed at his illusions : ‘ T ou are 
dreaming, whilst you should be awake to the sad reali- 
ties of life,’ said one of them, who was at the head of 
the Hew Orleans bar, and Avho Avas making thirty 
thousand dollars a year. ‘ You are fresh from the 
bench of the schools, and you are full of the Bucolics 
of Yirgil. You know by heart, no doubt, the poetical 
effusions of Horace about his Stibine farm. But Horace 

( 257 ) 


258 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


and Yirgil were the favorites of the master of the 
woi’ld. They saw what they described through the 
aurea mediocritds which they possessed. Will you 
have ill your rural retreat that gilt mediocrity of for- 
tune which the Latin poet recommends ? 'No. Your 
horizon will have the copper hue of poverty. Far 
from erecting their tent in a distant and savage land, 
they lived in the vicinity of Rome amidst the enjoy- 
ments of the highest civilization, and of boundless 
wealth which, if not their own, was in the possession of 
admiring patrons, too happy to minister to their com- 
forts and wants. They had slaves to work for them ; 
they were gentlemen of leisure residing in voluptuous 
villas, rather than farmers. You might as well fancy 
that the real peasant is like those opera rustics who figure 
on the stage in clean cambric linen, with perfumed 
hair, soft hands adorned with rosy nails, and a shep- 
herd’s crook decorated with ribbons at two dollars a 
yard, amidst an Arcadian scenery which never existed 
save on painted canvas, where sheep and cattle look so 
dainty that they would be admitted into a lady’s bou- 
doir. They sing the charms of a pastoral life after the 
fashion of Seneca, who eloquently descanted on the 
advantages of poverty when promenading in his gor 
geous gardens, and living alternately, like a Sardana* 
pains, in his urban and rural palaces. How many slavefj 
can you buy to begin with V 

“ ‘ I have none but these two vigorous hands of 
mine.’ 

‘ Bah ! this is sheer folly. You are not used to man- 
ual labor.’ 

“ ‘ I have a strong will'.’ 

‘‘ ‘ But exposure and an unhealthy climate will make 
you sick.’ 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


259 


‘ I will conquer the climate and every other obsta- 
cle.’ 

‘ Yery good. Make the experiment, and in a short 
time you will come back to the city. Remember that 
the law is the profession suitable to your education, and 
that my office, my books and my counsels will ever be 
at your service.’ 

“ Emmanuel Brie had only a few hundred dollars at his 
command, and therefore could not aspire to purchasing 
any farm or plantation in those parts of the country 
which were densely settled. He had the intrepidity to 
go as far as the W ashita district, then a perfect wilder- 
ness. He bought from the United States a tract of 
land, cut down the first tree, built himself a log-house, 
and planted corn and potatoes. He had no neighbor 
within forty miles, save a few Indians. He was not 
disheartened, however, and went on working with a 
stout heart, and making to himself a home in the midst 
of primeval forests. He had been absent about a j ear 
when he returned to Hew Orleans, and* visited his 
friend, the great lawyer. 

“ ‘ Ah ! ah !’ exclaimed the light of the bar, ‘ you 
have come back sober-minded this time. You have had 
enough of yom’ country paradise.’ 

“ ‘ Hot in the least,’ replied Emmanuel, ‘ I just begin 
to appreciate it,’ and he related all that he had done ; 
‘ and what will astonish you still more,’ continued he, 
‘ is, that I have come here only to buy a few things 
which I need for my approaching marriage. The 
daughter of a pioneer like myself consents to be my 
wife. She will cook, wash, milk and take care"* of the 
household whilst I plough.’ 

‘ Good God ! ’ exclaimed the law}"er, ^ this is the 
most intense case of insanity wffiich has ever fallen un- 


260 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


der iny observation. To marry,, when rich, is a hazard- 
ous undertaking ; hut to marry, when poor, is more 
than man ought to dare ! ’ 

The insane youth, however, was not deterred by the 
remonstrances of his learned friend. He married as he 
had intended, and tliought himself a wealthy man when 
he was able to buy a slave. The district of Washita, 
where Emmanuel had established himself, was gradually 
settled in the course of years, and his lands rose great- 
ly in value. He became in time a w-ealthy cotton 
planter, the owner of a hundred negroes, and the head 
of a numerous family of children to whom he took care 
to give a liberal education, habits of industry, and those 
principles of honor and morality which had guided him 
through life. He who had refused to be a lawyer, w’as 
compelled by the- solicitations of the inhabitants of the 
parish in which he lived, to become a judge, and gave 
great satisfaction in that office — which shows that the 
study of law, paradoxical as it may seem to be, is 
not absolutdy necessary as a previous condition to a 
popular administration of justice. Although he had 
tilled the ground with his own hands, the fanner Em- 
manuel had retained and cultivated his literary tastes. 
He wrote interesting articles for newspapers and con- 
tributed essays to reviews. Hot withstanding his lead- 
ing so long a rustic life, outside of the precincts of 
civilization, he never lost the original polish of his 
manners, and remained a beautiful type of those gentle- 
men of the old regime, of whom w^e always read 
with admiration the fascinating description, whilst we 
feel re:^eshed and peculiarly fortunate, if we have the 
advantage of occasionally meeting some fossil relic of 
tliat almost forgotten race. He was generous and hos- 
pitable, and the palm of his hand w^as always open to 


FERN-ANDO DE LEMOS. 


2G1 


relieve distress. I heard Judge Emmamiel, on this 
very spot, when he was very old, give a sketch of his 
life to a friend. He had come here to pay a tribute of 
respect to the memory of that distinguished lawyer 
who had treated him with so much kindness when he 
■first arrived in this country. On that occasion, I heard 
him say : 

‘‘ ^ I still think at the end of my career, as I thought 
at the beginning of it : that Cicero was right when he 
advocated a country life as the safest, the most pleasant, 
the most dignified, and the most befitting a free man. 
The proof of it is afibrded me whenever I leave my 
distant home to visit Hew Orleans. When I look 
round me in this thriving and fast-growing city, I see 
an appalling number of wrecks in the midst of much 
prosperity. The lawyers and merchants who, fifty years 
ago, were making so much money, and who laughed at 
me when I shouldered my ax for the wilderness, have, 
almost without an exception, died in debt and left their 
families in destitution, whilst I am prosperous beyond 
my expectations. My numerous children are in com- 
fortable circumstances, and my grand and great-grand 
children have sprung up around my hearth, blessing 
me with a luxuriant harvest of love, to delight my 
sight and fill up the granary of my heart. I am now 
ready to depart like an old patriarch, in peace with the 
world and with myself.’ 

“ So you see,” said Tintin Calandro to me, “ that, to 
obtain success, it is not always necessary to have a bad 
heart and a cold calculating head.” 

‘^Agreed,” I replied, ‘‘but exceptions, you know, 
only prove the rule. The success of the farmer Em- 
manuel, being that of an excellent man, is exceedingly 
gratifying to me, but I am not as convinced as he is, 


262 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


that rural property is safer than any other, and that ag- 
ricultural life is freer from vicissitudes than that of men 
engaged in other pursuits, at least in our country. The 
history of those splendid plantations which dot the 
banks of the Mississippi, three hundred miles on both 
sides of the mighty stream, would, if written, be a cur- 
ious one, made up of fearful changes and catastrophes. 
A planter, for instance, succeeds after a life of toil in 
establishing a sugar or cotton estate, productive of a 
princely revenue, which at his death he leaves free from 
debts to his family. Shortly after he has departed, that 
plantation, which used to make large crops, no longer 
yields enough to cover expenses. In a few years it has 
to be sold to a stranger, and the family that was born 
to the manor sinks for ever. Where are they, the heirs 
of wealthy parents ? They were up above the clouds, 
now they are down in the mud, and the swift-coming 
wave. of oblivion sweeps over them. Woe to those wh6 
fall in civilized society ! They have seldom titae to rise 
before they are crushed under the iron-shod feet of the 
rushing multitude in hot chase after some alluring 
phantom.” 

“ This is not the fault of that kind of property so 
much valued by farmer Emmanuel,” replied Tintin Ca- 
landro, but it is due to a want of industry and econo- 
my, and is rather to be attributed to those false ideas, 
false habits and false education prevailing in Louisi- 
ana. There is nothing conservative in your moral and 
social atmosphere, nor in your public polity, nor even 
in the sacred hearths where ought to burn the fire of 
the family circle. There is no secret and consecrated 
place for household gods. There is here no civil, polit- 
ical, religious, or even natural authority. There is no 
help, or charity, for the laggard or loiterer by the way- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


263 


side, who should be digging in the gold mine below, in- 
stead of looking up at the wonders of the sky above his 
head. Every one for himself, and . the devil take the 
hindmost in the general rash into Mammon’s mint .for 
the largest share of the coin on which he sets his stamp. 
Every one is born an enlightened and free thinker, in- 
dependent of all ties but those imposed and removable 
at pleasure, acknowledging no superior, because every 
body is as good as every body else and a god to himself, 
recognizing no other power than that which is assented 
to or granted for the time being, and which is to be 
withdrawn or set aside at will like an inconvenient or 
worn-out garment. I will not go into details on this 
sad subject. I will merely ask you how many men, in 
the broad breadth and length of Louisiana, live in the 
paternal house in which they were born? Very few, 
indeed, if any, you will admit. As to any one dwell- 
ing under his grandfather’s roof, either in cities or in 
the country, I venture to say such a phenomenon is 
hardly to be found. On those who do not care for the 
past, the future will frown, for that future well knows 
that, in its turn, it is destined to be the past. What 
the world in its present course of reform and innova- 
tion, particularly on this continent and in this republic, 
calls prejudices and errors, has been the deep-laid foun- 
dations and the sills of the social edifice every where 
since the beginning. They are the roots of the oak, 
burying themselves in the earth like foul things, and 
not admired like that . noble tree’s leafy head, which is 
gilded by the rays of the sun, and to which the winds 
sing their wild melodies. But dig out those roots, and 
the fallen oak would soon rot among reeking weeds. 
Hence nothing can be stable here, neither families, nor 
wealth, rank, position, laws and ideas, nor any thing 


264 


FERNANDO DE DEMOS. 


else. They lack roots. To build here is to build on 
quicksand. Besides, the prosperity of the Southern States 
reposes on African slavery — an institution which is bat- 
tered down by the converging fire of irresistible batteries 
inside and outside of the United States. I hear the 
rumbling of the volcano. I shall not live long enough 
to see its eruption, you may. Universal sufifrage, the doc- 
trine of equality, the enthronement of pride where hu- 
mility should be kneeling, tlie blasphemous apotheosis 
of the populace whose voice is proclaimed to be the 
voice of God, the deification of brutal appetites, the 
worshiping of the body and the ostracism of the Boul, 
the inverting of secular pyramids so as to make them 
stand on their apex as a new basis, the sceptre of pow- 
er and command given to the blind and uncultivated 
intellect of the multitude, rather than to the innate and 
nurtured genius of the heavenly chosen few, the put- 
ting of the feet where the head should be, and the pre- 
ference of the secretions of the toe over those of the 
brain, the intoxicating incense burned in honor of the 
many-headed monster whose thousand altars are minis- 
tered to by the self-constituted priesthood of greedy 
demagogues, the locust swarm of new-fangled notions 
obscuring the light of the sun, the adoption of false and 
unnatural dogmas, the hatred of all superiorities made an 
article of faith for the lower classes, the inevitable tyr- 
anny of irresponsible majorities, the introduction among 
you of Tarquin’s levelling rod, the certain and not very 
distant emancipation of your slaves, probably and finally 
a civil war '6n a larger scale and fiercer than the world 
has ever seen, these are the causes which will produce 
in your republic a chaos of evils sutficiently horrible to 
gladden the heart of his satanic majesty. Hurrah ! 
What work there will be for grave-diggers like me ! 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 265 

The gravies of armies ! The graves of liberty, of order, 
of morality, of political honesty, of national patriotism ! 
The grave of the Constitution of the United States! 
The grave of State sovereignties 1 Hurrah 1 Hurrah 
for the grave-diggers 1 But, hist ! hist ! Do n’t you 
see him ? There ! there I . . . . there .... how he 
strides with imperial majesty !” 

“ Who ? who ?” said I, carried away and thrown into 
a state of contagious excitement by Tintin Calandro’s 
wild look and maniac-like language. 

‘‘ Who he screamed. Why, Julius Coesar 1 Ave, 
imperator 1 I salute thee, O emperor ! Why dost thou 
revisit this globe? Art thou in search of the Great 
Unknown who is to imitate thee and become the master 
of this continent? Ave, imperator! I salute thee 
again, and again, O sublime chief of a sublime peo- 
ple !” And Tintin, shouting hurrah for Caesar, and 
hat in hand, rushed frantically after the phantom of 
his own creation, and was soon lost to my sight among 
the tombs. It was one of those fits of insanity which 
occasionally seized on the strong mind of that unfor- 
tunate man, and conquered it v/ith the force of a 
demon. 

Musing on the strange hallucinations which clouded 
an intellect so lucid and so rational in its main texture, 
I was leaving the grave-yard, when, at the gates I met 
a funeral. Hastening to pass by it with my hat off, in 
token of respect for the dead, I was stopped by a friend 
of mine who was in the numerous cortege accompany- 
ing the corpse to the place of its sepulture. He lived 
some distance below the city on the bank of the 
river, 

‘‘ Is that you ?” I said. I confess that I am aston- 
ished to meet you so far from your plantation, where 
12 


266 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


your presence, I know, is so necessary at present, wlien 
you are taking in your sugar crop.” 

I heard,” he replied, “ that this lady was dead, 
whom we are burying. As I had no time to lose, if I 
wished to be present at her funeral, I ordered my 
swiftest horse to be saddled, and I rode full speed 
without drawing breath, to pay her this last tribute 
of regard.” 

She must have been a very dear friend, or relative.” 

No. I never saw her. But she was no ordinary 
woman and deserved to be honored, as a noble exampk? 
to be set before those of her sex who, in these days of 
turpitude, show so little principle and such a laxity of 
morals on a certain subject.” 

“ Who was she, and what do you mean ?” 

Accompany me to the grave, and, when the cere- 
mony is over, I will give you the explanation you de- 
sire.” 

According to his request I joined the procession, and, 
after the funeral rites had been performed and the crowd 
had dispersed, my friend thus addressed me : 

‘‘-The lady whose last remains we have brought here 
was a native of Louisiana, and the wife of a Spanish 
naval officer, who continued in the service of his coun- 
try in the Island of Cuba, but who, nevertheless, had 
bought a sugar plantation in the parish of St. Charles, 
where his wife and numerous children resided. The 
proximity of the Island of Cuba permitted him to visit 
them frequently. It is an old Roman proverb : ‘ that 
the foot of the proprietor fertilizes the soil.’ The Span- 
ish officer was generally absent from his estate. The 
consequence w^as that he made poor crops, and at last 
died in debt. His wife, who had brought him a hand- 
some dowry, for which she had a mortgage on the 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


267 


plantation, had, whilst he lived, renounced the rights 
which she had under the mortgage, in order to enable 
him to borrow money. Her lawyer, after her husband’s 
death, told her that the renunciation which she had 
made was null and void, because certain formalities 
had not been observed at the time, and that she and 
her children would be entirely ruined, if she did not 
avail herself of that circumstance to screen the planta- 
tion from a seizure by her husband’s creditors. 

‘Is this really the law?’ she said. ‘Yes, madam,’ 
replied her counsel. 

“ ‘ Well, then the law sanctions an infamy. My hus- 
band’s debt was incurred with my knowledge and con- 
sent for what I thought to be for our common benefit, 
and I well understood, at the time, the engagement I 
had entered into — which was, that the lender of the 
money should be paid in preference to my own claims. 
Shall I now repudiate that debt and disgrace my hus- 
band’s memory and myself, under the pretence of a 
want of legal formalities ? Ho. Let that just debt be 
paid, even if I and my children are to starve to-morrow. 
Honor before ht^ead^ is my motto, and must be that of 
all my descendants.’ 

“ Much pressure was exercised on her by friends and 
relatives to induce a change of resolution. She was 
immovable, and died shortly after in the utmost pov- 
erty. This is the reason why 1 rode twenty-four miles 
post-haste and almost killed my best horse, to be pres- 
ent at her funeral.” 

“ It is well that she is dead,” said I, “for she did not 
belong to this progressive age. She must have been 
full of moth-eaten prejudices. She would have been a 
standing reproach to the present generation of women, 
many of whom keep concealed under their ample petti- 


268 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


coats tlie plunder stolen bj tbeir husbands from their 
creditors, and who, if they had known the out-of-the- 
way conduct of your old lady, would have overwhelmed 
her with maledictions, if not with stones, for her want 
of maternal love and prudent consideration for her own 
welfare. She evidently had not been philanthropically 
and philosophmally educated in our public schools at 
the expense of the tax-pa’^ers ; she must have sewed 
her husband’s breeches instead of writing epileptic 
poetry; she must have read her prayer-book instead 
of the epistle of Heloise to Abelard, and the novels of 
Dumas and Eugene Sue ; she must have thumped her 
churn for butter instead of thumping her piano for ex- 
ecrable music, whilst languidly howling amorous senti- 
ments. But I remember that the Spaniards say : del rey 
y de la inquisition^ chiton ^ — which suggests to me this 
modification of the saying I have quoted : of contempo- 
rary vices and follies, and of the goddess of modern 
civilization, mum! I will recommend, however, the 
good widow’s tomb to Tintin Calandro, to whom I 
shall relate what you have told me. He will take most 
tender care of it.” 

Who is Tintin Calandro ?” 

“ Surely you must have heard of Tintin Calandro, 
the sexton and grave-digger of the St. Louis cemetery.’’ 

‘‘ Oh ! yes, now I remember. I had forgotten Tintin 
the crazy.” 

‘‘ True,” said I, ‘‘ Tintin the crazy. But there is 
method, and reason, and sublimity in his madness at 
times, and always much kindness and nobihty of feel- 
ing in his heart. I even suspect that it is the too ex- 
quisite organization of that heart which is the cause of 
the disorder in his brain.” 

* Of the King and of the Inquisition, mum ! 


CHAPTEK XXm. 


MASTERS AIO) SLAVES. — TINTIN CALANDRO’S VATICINA TIONS 
ON THE SUBJECT. 

A FEW days afterward, I was passing in Rampart 
street, when at the corner of that street and of Conti, 
I met a funeral which attracted my attention. It was 
an expensive one, such as is reserved for the privileged 
few who die rich. The hearse was superb ; the coffin 
was of solid mahogany with gilt carvings. The whole 
clergy of Hew Orleans were present. An immense con- 
course of blacks, of both sexes, formed the procession. 
Two white men, besides the priests, were the only at- 
tendants of the Caucasian race to be seen. They walked 
bareheaded immediately behind the chariot which car- 
ried the corpse. It was an unusual and strange sight. 
I inquired whose funeral it was. I was answered, as I 
expected, that it was that of a negro. My curiosity 
was excited. I followed the procession, and my aston- 
ishment reached its climax when I saw a magnificent 
mansoleum open its portals, and the black man’s coffin 
deposited in the sepulchral vault of one of our most 
aristocratic families. After the obsequies of the de- 
parted were over, I approached one of the officiating 
priests with whom I happened to be acquainted, and I 
asked him if he could give me an explanation of what 
I had seen. 

‘‘ I can,” he replied. “ Years ago, a Sicilian mar- 

(269) 


270 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


ried the daughter of a wealthy widow. Her family 
consisted of the daughter who had married that for- 
eigner, and of a son. Shortly after that ill-fated alli- 
ance, the son and son-in-law had a violent quarrel. 
The Sicilian’s threats were fearful. They were looked 
upon, however, as the mere ebullitions of evanescent 
wrath, and inspired no disquietude. All the parties I 
speak of lived on a sugar plantation not very distant 
from the city. One day, when Chastelar, the son of the 
widow, was in his field, overlooking his negroes who 
were at work, and armed with a gun with which he had 
provided himself in the hope of meeting a bear which 
had lately been discovered on the premises, one of his 
slaves, on seeing him turn round and strike into a road 
which led into a dense sugar-cane field, threw down his 
hoe and followed him. 

“ ^ What do you want V said the master. 

‘ I want to watch over you,’ replied the negro. ‘ I 
am satisfied your brother-in-law is concealed in the 
canes and that he intends to kill you.’ 

“ ‘ Honsense ! Go to your work, and trouble me no 
more with your foolish fears.’ 

‘‘ The slave did not obey, and, falling on his knees, 
begged not to be dismissed. Chastelar, without paying 
any further attention to the negro’s obstinate entreaties, 
went on his way, whistling an opera tune. He had not 
gone far, before the Sicilian, stepping out of his hiding- 
place, pointed his gun at the object of his hatred, whose 
back was turned, and who apprehended no danger. 
But the negro had been as watchful and keen-sighted 
as a hawk. Keeping close to his master, he had been 
looking right and left and over his shoulders. He no- 
ticed a waving of the top of the canes ; he heard a 
rustling sound ; he saw a man emerge from the dense 


FEJ^NAa^DO de lemos. 


271 


green mass of foliage, and a gun take its murderous 
aim. Quick as thought and with a warning shriek he 
sprang upon his master, and covered him with his body 
as with a shield. He received the buckshot destined 
for that master and fell at his feet. Chastelar wheeled 
round and hred in his turn at his intended murderer, 
who dropped dead. Fortunately, Baptiste (that was the 
negro’s name), had only been dangerously wounded, 
when the probability was that he would be killed. It 
is needless to say that he was attended by the best phy- 
sician and tenderly nursed. As soon as he recovered 
his health he was set free, and became the body ser- 
vant of his former master whom he refused to leave, al- 
though a handsome pension for life had been offered 
him. In the course of time Chastelar died. A clause 
in his will prescribed the funeral which you have seen, 
whenever the ceremony should be required. The two 
white men who follow^ed the hearse as mourners, are his 
sons. The testator further ordered that his faithful 
Baptiste, when dead, should be placed by his side in the 
family tomb. His wish has been complied wdth, as you 
have witnessed.” 

The priest had just departed, when Tintin Calandro 
came. I related the anecdote to him. “ It does not 
surprise me,” he said, “ I know one of the same nature. 
In the town of Opelousas, in the parish of St. Landry, 
there resided a French merchant whose commercial op- 
erations were extensive. He owned a herculean negro, 
called Jasper, who had been so disorderly and rebel- 
lious, that he had loaded him with chains. Jasper had 
been for some time dragging these heavy ornaments in 
the streets of the small town in which he lived, when 
the three-story brick store of Yernon, his master, took 
fire. The rush of the devouring element was so rapid, 


272 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


that, in a few minutes, it enveloped the whole edifice. 
Vernon, remembering that a box which was in his attic 
conttvined valuable papers, ran up to get them, when, 
lo ! the staircase, undermined by the conflagi-ation, fell 
with a crash which resounded like a death knell in his 
ears. The crowd outside screamed with horror. The 
lambent flames were already closing round Vernon, who 
was seen at a window, measuring with his eyes the 
depth of the abyss below. ‘A ladder! a ladder I’ 
shouted the excited multitude who contemplated the 
dreadful scene, but no ladder was at hand. The wife 
of Vernon had fainted, and his children were wringing 
their hands in despair. Twice, with a bundle of papers 
pressed to his breast, the unfortunate man had shown 
himself at the window, as if determined to attempt 
the fearful leap, twice his heart had failed him, and he 
had retired. But the pursuing flames had soon brought 
him back to the same spot, and already their shooting 
tongues could be seen, like that of a huge sei’pent, lick- 
ing his shoulders and hissing for joy at having reached 
their victim. At that moment, Jasper presented him- 
self under the window. Opening his sinewy arms and 
displaying his colossal breast, he shouted to his master, 
‘ [N’ever fear ; throw yourself down on me ; I’ll break 
your fall and save you.’ There could no longer be any 
hesitation. Master and slave, locked in each other’s 
arms, roUed on the ground, but fortunately both rose safe 
and sound — the master, with his valuable papers in his 
right hand, and the slave, with his rattling chains. 
‘Jasper, my dear rascal,’ gasped Vernon with a voice 
almost choked with emotion, ‘ you are free ; run to the 
blacksmith and have your chains knocked off. Then 
come to me, for I have something more to do for you.’ ” 
“Well done,” I exclaimed. “Such things speak 


FERNANDO BE LEMOS. 273 

volumes in favor of that unfortunate race. Many 
noble and touching stories could be related of the mas- 
ter and of the slave which would show, that the in- 
stitution which is the basis of Southern society is not so 
demoralizing as represented. Masters and slaves have 
no doubt committed crimes in their respective relations 
to each other, but it is unquestionable that those rela- 
tions are wonderfully misunderstood where they do not 
exist. Under the softening influence of Christianity 
and of an education which is becoming every day more 
extended and more liberal, the master is growing more 
indulgent, more humane and more affectionate, and the 
slave more attached and more contented, because he 
feels that he is treated justly and kindly, and that he is 
improving physically and morally. If left to themselves, 
the slave and master would with harmonious recip- 
rocity work out their mission of laborious partnership, 
of cheerful obedience on one side, and friendly protec- 
tion on the other, bound together in a patriarchal mode 
of existence by the links of duty and love, and mindful 
of the mandates of St. Paul : ‘ Servants be obedient to 
them that are your masters according to the flesh, with 
fear and trembling in singleness of your heart, as unto 
Christ. . . and ye masters, do the same things unto them, 
forbearing threat enirig.’ But alas, they are not left to 
themselves ; the master is chafed by systematic calumny, 
and the tempter creeps into the Eden of the African, say- 
ing to him : ‘ Eat of this fruit of knowledge, and thou shalt 
be free, and thou shalt not work, and thou shalt be equal 
to the white race.’ Would to God that those who are ac- 
tuated by pure and sincere motives, would come and 
judge for themselves, and not pass judgment at a di^ance 
on vv^hat they know nothing of ! All those who have acted 
otherwise, and who have honestly and conscientiously 
12 * 


274 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


studied African slavery on the spot where it grows and 
flourishes, have been agreeably surprised. They have 
seen blemishes and abuses inseparable from all human 
institutions, but also much that is commendable. I re- 
member a French physician of much merit, who had 
been at home a red republican and somewhat of a 
duellist, and who, after some years of residence in ]!!^'ew 
Orleans, once said to me : ‘ If I had met you in France, 
and if you had said one word in defence of slavery, I 
would have fought you, such would have been my in- 
dignation 1 How that I know what slavery is, I should 
run into the other extreme and could not help insulting 
an abolitionist, because I am convinced that the blacks 
of Louisiana are the happiest peasantry on the face of 
our globe.’ There certainly was here some exaggeration 
of views and feelings, but it shows how widely men will 
conscientiously disagree with themselves when looking 
at the same object from a different stand-point. 

I will mention another instance of the like nature, 
among many others, although it may appear a little 
strange that I should again bring another physician into 
play on the same subject. A doctor Bosco had been at 
the head of a hospital at Odessa. He had been decor- 
ated by the Emperor Hicholas for the services he had 
rendered to humanity during the prevalence of the 
plague. But Bosco, although a man of much brain, had 
heated it into a diseased condition by inappropriately 
wearing the Phrygian cap of liberty, which suited the 
head of a Greek near three thousand years ago, but 
surely not a modern Sarmatian skull. It acted as an 
extinguisher, to a considerable extent, on the bright 
flame of his intellect and obscured his judgment. He 
had greedily adopted the flattering doctrine for some, 
that all men are born free, equal and self-sufficient like 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


275 


God, and no allowance was to be made in this matter 
for time, place, and other circumstances. A Cossack was 
as capable of self-government as an Athenian of the 
days of Pericles. Evidently the doctor had a generous 
soul, which had run mad from over indulgence in dan- 
gerous illusions, and which required a straight jacket 
to prevent mischief. Why should there be a Czar, a 
nobility and serfs in Pussia \ He was for an ex-abrupto 
solution of that question. Therefore our Esculapius 
had determined to cure the social body of all its ills in 
his native country, by administering to it the panacea 
of revolution, and had entered into a conspiracy for a 
topsy turvy improvement of his fellow- citizens in par- 
ticular and of the world in general. The consequence 
was, that he had to abandon a brilliant position and fly 
with his wife, his daughter and three grown up sons, all 
of them very reflned and worthy of a better fate than 
that of having a father with equality, fraternity and 
liberty on the brain. He came to Louisiana, where 
I had the honor of making his acquaintance, and I 
found him to be a very interesting man even in his 
crotchets. 

“ ‘ I had such a horror of slavery,’ he said to me, 
‘ that, had I been able to speak English, I never would 
have come to your State, but would have settled in 
Massachusetts under the shadow of the Bunker Hill 
monument. I soon discovered, however, that I could not 
exercise my profession . successfully and make a living 
anywhere in the United States, except among a French 
population, whose language I possess. Hence I am 
here ; and, although I retain my same old opinions and 
feelings, yet I must confess that I am agreeably disap- 
pointed, and that I found out that your slaves, so far as 
physical comforts go, are superior to a great portion of 


276 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


the European peasantry, and have even as much intelli- 
gence and morality.’ 

“^Well, doctor,’ I replied, ‘I suppose that we 
Americans, who are horrified at the slavery of white 
people in Russia and at the tales of hellish oppression 
which we hear, would, like yourself in this country, dis- 
cover there a very different state of things from what 
we dream of, if we were to visit tlie dominions of his 
imperial majesty, the autocratic ruler of that immense 
territory from which you have fled.’ 

‘ I would strangle the emperor, if I could,’ continued 
Bosco, ‘ put down all the nobility, emancipate all the 
serfs and carve for them handsome farms out of the 
estates of their lords, but, at the same time, I am 
too honest a man to disguise the truth, and not to 
admit that no set of laborers on the face of the earth, 
not even your own slaves, can be compared with ad- 
vantage to the Russian serf in the enjoyment of a home 
full of comforts and plenty. Yes, sir, go into a serf’s 
cabin, and he will give you, as a stranger, a hearty wel- 
come. His good wife will spread before you on a clean 
table cloth a frugal, simple, but abundant meal. You 
will have white bread, eggs, meat, milk, potatoes and 
other esculents, with a variety of vegetables at will. If 
you spend the night with him, you will have a blazing 
fire until you go to bed, and, when you retire to rest, 
you will have a weather-tight room, sheets as white as 
snow and warm covering.’ ” 

“ ‘ This a gratifying description, doctor, of the condi- 
tion of those people.’ ” 

“ ‘ It may be so to you, but their stupidity and fanati- 
cism shock me. It passeth the understanding. For if 
I say to a peasant : My friend, you seem very comfort- 
able here,” he will answer : ‘‘ Yes, sir, thanks to our 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


277 


father the czar,” and, doffing off his cap, he will turn 
reverentially and bow to a coarse portrait of the empe- 
ror, which always hangs on the wall of a Russian hut. 
Such servility is intolerable.’ ” 

‘ I have attentively listened to you, doctor,’ I said, 
‘ and you confirm me in a conclusion to which I came 
long ago : that nothing but improper pride is at the 
bottom of much of the discontent existing in this world. 
All that I have to say in the way of comments on the 
information you have imparted to me about the Russian 
serf, and for which I am thankful, is, that if the Emperor 
iN^icholas, Alexander, Peter, or whatever may be his 
name, should give me all I desire or need to constitute 
complete happiness or contentment, I would, although 
born a free and enlightened citizen of the greatest and 
purest of all past, present and future republics, hang up 
his portrait in my bed-chamber, and three times a day 
salute the cherished image. I should think it but a dog 
cheap exhibition of gratitude.’ ” 

The doctor’s only answer was a lofty smile, which I 
construed into an intimation that I was a very mean- 
spirited and chicken-hearted fellow. I felt rebuked and 
humbled, which did me good, for I knew I had the 
reputation of having a proud temper, which I wished 
to be subdued, if that enemy existed in my breast. 
Shortly after, the yellow fever came with all its might 
and glory, like a grand monarch possessed of the divine 
right to pick among his subjects those whom he chooses 
to appropriate to his special service. I followed to 
their respective graves in Baton Rouge the doctor’s 
wife, then one of his sons, then another, and another — 
all three gone. 'Next, the doctor’s turn came. He 
stretched himself on the bed where so many of his 
family had breathed their last, and had the good fortune 


278 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


to die. Slightly modifying Madame Roland’s celebrated 
exclamation when on her way to the guillotine, I said 
to myself : O liberty, what follies are perpetrated in thy 
name ! The daughter of Bosco was the only member 
of that family who remained alive. She was an ac- 
complished musician, and, with u sad heart, she was 
beginning to give lessons of music to have bread, when 
a rich European, rather boorish, and in point of culture 
very inferior to her, offered his hand. She hesita- 
ted. Friends and sympathizers advised her to accept. 
What could she do ? She was alone in the world, des- 
titute, and in a foreign land. She yielded, and with 
her uncongenial mate she returned to the land of un- 
equal rights. What has since become of her, God only 
knows. It is to be hoped that, henceforth, whenever 
she met with superiority of rank or fortune, she, unlike 
her father, accepted her inferiority with contented 
humility, and never forgot the family sacrifice which 
had been made at the altar of that Moloch of pride, 
which repudiates all authority and hierarchy, to inaugu- 
rate the license of thought and speech, and the anarchy 
of action.” 

If the characteristic of truth,” said Tintin Calandro, 
“ is universality and duration, and if the distinctive fea- 
ture of error is to be local, circumscribed and transitory, 
then slavery, with its various modifications, is an insti- 
tution founded on truth, for it has existed throughout 
the world since the beginning of historical records, un- 
til recently when it has begun to shrink into a smaller 
compass. It had thrived for centuries every where, un- 
der forms more or less visible, and with chains more or 
less heavy. It seemed to be a spontaneous and natural 
growth indigenous to our globe. But, like aU sublunary 
things, whether it came from hell, or from heaven, it is 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


279 


bound to disappear, at least in name, and the sooner in 
consequence of its having openly lasted so long. It is 
hoary with age and must decay, but not perish entirely, 
for nothing once created ever perishes, be it spiritual or 
material. Ideas are decomposed merely to reappear 
with modifications ; social and political institutions are 
struck down, apparently to rot, but they germinate 
again from the earth with a change of foliage which 
conceals the identity of the roots ; all matter crumbles 
into dust and vanishes, only to assume another compo- 
sition and organization ; the name, the shape and the 
complexion of things will be altered, but the substance 
will eternally remain. Be it as it may, the whole civ- 
ilized world, as it is called (Heaven save the mark !) 
now thunders forth that slavery, as we have it here, 
where the white man avowedly owns the black man as 
property, and not clandestinely as white masters own 
white. slaves in philanthropic communities where sancti- 
monious cupidity throws a veil over the title deeds of 
bondage, is contrary to Christianity and a monstrous 
sin. It is not true, however, for the God man and 
His apostles would not have hesitated to denounce it as 
they denounced all other sins. On the contraty, they 
respected and sanctioned it, as they respected and sanc- 
tioned the authority of Caesar. We hear it bawled out 
on all sides that slave communities are necessarily im- 
moral. All cant, all cant! Nothing else. The Ro- 
mans, during four hundred years, were the most moral 
and religious people that ever lived. Although they 
were pagans and slaveholders, and although they had 
the right to repudiate their wives as they pleased, there 
was not among them during that long period of time, 
one single divorce ; and, although they had the power 
of life and death over their children, that tremendous 


280 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


power never was abused. The cry also is: slavery 
stupefies the master and the slave. It is false again, as 
false as Judas, for the Athenians had more genius, more 
refinement, more wit and more taste than all the mod- 
ern free nations of the earth put together ; and it can- 
not be denied that, in America, slavery has Christian- 
ized the savage blacks imported from Africa and great- 
ly improved their moral, intellectual and physical con- 
dition. Nevertheless slavery, African slavery, against 
which such a hue and cry is raised, whilst the slav- 
ery of whites is allowed to slumber peacefully else- 
where, must succumb at last. It is merely a question 
of time. Whether that time is near, or distant, must 
be left to the sagacity of the wise to determine. To 
my mental vision it is clear, that the abolition of slav- 
ery in the United States is comparatively near. Free 
States and slave States, aristocracy and democracy, can- 
not live long in fraternal embrace. It is a law of na- 
ture. It has pleased Grod to create irreconcilable an- 
tagonisms like fire and water. Your slaves shall be 
freed by the superior force of an intruding hand, and, 
as it is another law of nature that distinct races, partic- 
ularly like the black and white which cannot commingle 
and fuse into a heterogeneous compound, shall not ex- 
ist together on a footing of equality, the Caucasian race 
will annihilate the African, and, in less than a hundred 
years, the black man will become as rare as the red man. 

“ There might be a chance, if not to escape from, at 
least to retard, those evils with which you are threaten- 
ed. Take the initiative, emancipate gradually your 
slaves, give them an appropriate education, institute a 
sort of feudal tenure, let them be attached to the glebe, 
and into them let the spirit of the Scottish clans be in- 
fused. Your negroes are naturally aristocratic in their 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


281 


instincts, and, besides, they hate all foreigners, all those 
who are not born on their native soil. Put them un- 
der the sway of hereditary cliiefs ; let tliem be the vas- 
sals of those chiefs, and let the chiefs be their patriarchal 
heads. Let them have interests in common — a bond 
of union between the protected and the protectors. Let 
the negroes have all the civil rights you enjoy, and 
some of the political, under proper restrictions. Let 
them have a country, let them have property. Improve 
them morally and intellectually, as much as practica- 
ble ; elevate them to you instead of descending to them, 
but keep them distinct and apart, and beware of debas- 
ing amalgamation. Let them be loved, loving and 
prosperous vassals and tenants. Then, if they are not 
an element of force, they may not be an element of 
weakness, and perhaps of danger. "When the inevita- 
ble struggle shall come between the Southern States on 
one side, and the Northern and Western States on the 
other, aim above all at forming a strong government, 
if you wish to avoid the worst of all fates — that of a 
conquered people; and the only strong and durable 
government which the world has ever seen is the aris- 
tocratic, as is exemplified by Pome, Yenice, England, 
and particularly France, whose aristocratic monarchy, 
ten centuries old, perished shortly after it became auto- 
cratic under a cardinal’s blood-red hat.” 

‘‘But, Tintin Calandro,” I said, “you are dreaming 
of impossibilities. You are forgetting that you live in an 
age essentially democratic, in which numbers will, with 
the rod of majorities, rule despotically over crushed and 
obedient minorities.” 

“ Then your hour of trial will soon be at hand,” re- 
plied Tintin ; “ and your five millions of slaves will de- 
sert you, and you will be overwhelmed.” 


282 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


You forget, Tintin Calandro, that the Federal ceii 
BUS only gives us a little above three millions.” 

The census is false and deceptive like your ‘ Dec- 
laration of Independence,’ ’which, as to the principles 
it proclaims, is nothing but a pack of fallacies. The 
planters, as you well know, never gave but a very in- 
complete list of their slaves. To diminish taxation, 
more than one-third was omitted.” 

“ "Well,” said I, laughing at his rueful countenance, 
we can afford to wait a good while, I suppose, for the 
happening of the awful catastrophe which you an- 
nounce. The horizon is not so dark after all. Words 
of fury are often but empty sounds ; it is not every 
blustering wind that uproots the sturdy oak; and 
threatened men live long.” 

Lay not this flattering unction unto your soul,” re- 
plied Tintin with increasing animation ; rather fly 
from this doomed land and from the rain of blood 
which will deluge it ; fly from it, as the wife of Lot 
once fled from the city which the wrath of heaven was 
to blast, but, wiser than her, do not look behind. Take 
along with thee thy earthly goods, and God speed thee 
as thou runneth, for the hand of the spoiler is waxing 
strong.” 

Struck with the vehemence of his manner, I inter- 
rupted him, and said: ‘‘Tintin Calandro, my friend, 
you are running wild, almost mad ; compose yourself.” 

“ Oh ! oh !” he exclaimed ; “ that is but an old and 
Btale story. When Cassandra cautioned the Trojans 
against their impending fate, and when the man on 
the walls of the sacred city of Palestine cried : ‘ woe to 
Jerusalem, and woe to myself!’ they were said to be 
mad by those they wished to save. But the Greeks 
and the Eomans justified those prophets of evil, and 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


283 


made good the lamentations which had been derided 
and despised. When the soothsayer said to Ca?sar : 
‘ beware of the Ides of March,’ he was waived aside as 
a madman, or a qnack. But when the dagger of Brutus 
flashed in the senate, which of the two had acted mad- 
ly, the soothsayer who had given the warning, or the 
dictator who had disregarded it? Have you heard of 
the well-authenticated supper of Cazotte, the crack- 
brained, with Condorcet, Champfort,La Harpe and other 
celebrities ? At the festal board, when wine sparkled 
in the cup and witty jests enlivened the passing hour, 
he predicted to them the horrors of the French revolu- 
tion. Pointing his finger at Condorcet the strong- 
minded, the atheist, and the advocate of the right of 
women to vote and be elected to office, he said : “ You, 
marquis, will die in a prison by your own hand, to es- 
cape being publicl}^ beheaded by your revolutionary 
accomplices and associates in destroying the work of 
ages ; you. La Harpe, the favorite and enthusiastic disci- 
ple of Yoltaire, and the scoffing infidel, will haunt the 
confessional like a nun, and be as fanatically pious as a 
Carthusian monk.’ Thus he went on, telling each 
guest what his fate would be, and he ended with pro- 
phesying his own, which was to perish on the scaffold. 
O, how they roared, the half inebriated philosophers, 
deists and atheists, when they heard these predictions ! 
They were particularly tickled at the idea that La 
Harpe would put on the cassock. How they toasted 
La Harpe, the future saint, and Cazotte, the resuscitated 
Calchas ! What bumpers they drank to the new pro- 
phet! Why should they have been afraid? Was not 
Cazotte known to be half mad ? And being half mad, 
was he to be believed, when he pretended to read in 
the book of destiny ? . Well then, why should I com- 


284 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS, 


plain, I, poor Tintin Calandro, the old grave-digger 
and the ghost-seer ? Why should I not be laughed at 
when I say : Look ! look at the gigantic vampire of 
fanaticism whose dark shadow projects itself over this 
continent. Poor Tintin Calandro is mad !” And he 
slowly and musingly walked away repeating to him- 
self mournfully : “ Poor Tintin Calandro is mad ! mad ! 
mad ! mad !” 

I was accustomed to Tintin’s fits of insanity, but, I 
do not know why, there was something in this scene 
which shattered my nerves. An unaccountable and in- 
vincible gloominess came over my soul. I hastened 
home, drank a whole bottle of champagne, but felt 
more blue than before. I tried to read, but could not, 
went to bed in self-defence, and had dreadful dreams. 


CHAPTEE XXIV. 


THE STATESMAir. — ^BETTER BE A DOH THAN A POLITICIAN. 

The next time I met Tintin Calandro, I was sur- 
prised at the extreme cordiality with which he greeted 
me. He took both my hands and shook them heartily 
again and again, saying: “I esteem and love you 
more than ever. I have learned that a comite de sor 
hit jpvhlic^'^^ and in uttering these words a visible tre- 
mor passed over his whole frame, and his habitually pale 
face became still paler, “ but what am I talking about ?” 
said he correcting himself ; ‘‘I mean that a Committee 
of the Democratic party has called on you to invite 
you to run for an office to be obtained by the popular 
vote, and that you have refused, thank God ! So, my 
dear Fernando, you are not disposed, it seems, to turn 
politician, to be a buzzard living on the carcass of the 
social body, which, the more putrified it is, the more 
abundant and luscious food it offers to those foul birds.” 

I wondered at such utterances from the mouth of 
my recluse friend, and I replied : ‘‘ Xo fear of that, 
and there are several reasons for it. The first duty of 
a man is to know himself. Well, I know that the cut 
of my coat, such as it has pleased nature and her ad- 
junct operatives, to wit, circumstances, to make it, does 
not permit me to hang it on a pole in the market-place 

* A Committee of Public Safety. 


286 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


with anj reasonable hope that it may ever become a 
popular flag. Besides, I remember an advice which 
w^as given me by a great man, who could speak on the 
subject with full and special knowledge. It was in 
1829. I was returning to Hew Orleans from Phila- 
delphia, where I had obtained the honor of being ad- 
mitted to the distinguished bar of that city, after hav- 
ing successfully, and therefore proudly, passed through 
a severe examination conducted by such men as Sar- 
geant, Duponceau and Dallas. On my way home, I 
spent some days in Washington, which loomed in my 
youthful mind as the Olympus of all that was admira- 
ble and noble in this world. I was welcomed with 
much kindness by Henry Clay, who had more than 
once been an honored guest in my family. On the 
day fixed for my departure, I called on him to take 
leave. Whilst he had my hand grasped in his, he said : 
‘ Well, young man, what do you intend to do when 
at home % What course of life have you sketched for 
yourself V 

“ ‘ I thank you for the inquiry, Mr. Clay,’ I replied. 
‘ It is probable that I shall try to rise in my profession, 
and then why should I not have the legitimate ambi- 
tion to become a statesman ; and, in imitation of stim- 
ulating examples which I have before me, why should 
I not attempt to serve my country to the best of my 
abilities, although in an humble manner V 

‘^Hever have I since forgotten the expression of his 
eye and of his lips on that occasion. Squeezing with a 
sort of nervous pressure my hand, which he still held 
tightly, he said in the richest tone of his peculiarly musi- 
cal and sympathetic voice, and with a shade of melan- 
choly which flitted over his face like a light cloud 
across the luminous disk of the sun : 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


287 


^ Beware and reflect. Statesmen are few, politicians 
are many. I have been thus far, I believe, one of the 
most successful politicians in the United States, and 
yet, allow me to say to you before we part, what I hav^e 
said to my own sons : be a dog rather than a politi- 
cian.’ 

I frequently met Mr. Clay afterward, when the wind 
of political adversity had withered his hopes, when dis- 
appointments after disappointments had soured his 
heart, when the hounds of party warfare barked at his 
heels, when friends had proved untrue, when partisans 
had dwindled away before the prospect of failure, 
when the people had become cold before their former 
idol, when enemies had gathered with a triumphant 
flourish of trumpets round the noble stag at bay, 
when slander had done its best to blacken and tarnish 
the pure and bright panoply of gold with which the 
great commoner thought he had armed his illustrious 
name, when an occasional savage scowl sat on his fur- 
rowed brow, when his thin lips curled with contempt, 
when sometimes a fierce flash shot from his eyes as 
from those of an eagle looking round from the altitude 
of his eyrie for a prey to pounce upon. Then it was, 
on my hearing, even at the warm and social board of 
friendship, the bitter sarcasm and the sneering laugh 
which sometimes betrayed the galled and jaded soul 
within, that I repeated to myself more than once : 
‘ be a dog rather than a politician.’ It is not that I 
am insensible to the glory of being a martyr in a great 
cause. But great causes are not of frequent occurrence, 
and is not a martyr at will, he who wishes it. If I 
might make some concessions to the ‘ prince of dark- 
ness,’ whom Shakspeare proclaims to be a ‘ gentle- 
man,’ to gratify the ambition of being, like Pitt, the 


288 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


ruler of a great nation, I would not condescend to burn 
a tallow candle to the scullions of his satanic majesty’s 
kitchen, to be the emasculated governor of an equivo- 
cally sovereign state, or an obscure senator in Congress. 
But, to be less figurative ; I do not mean to say that 
there are not circumstances under which I should not 
accept otfice. I hold that any public or political situa- 
tion, which is spontaneously tendered with expectations 
that the commonwealth will be benefited by the accep- 
tance, no member of that commonwealth has a right 
to refuse, whatever his tastes, inclinations, or interests 
may be, whatever is his distrust in his own capacity, or 
whatever discomforts or even dangers might result to 
him from that acceptance. The most sacred and im- 
perative duty which civilized society imposes upon a 
citizen, is that of answering without hesitation the call 
of his country. But we are living in an age when no 
office is tendered, because it is hunted after by too 
many humanitarian terriers and bloodhounds, because no 
people will go to a Cincinnatus at the plow, and, taking 
him by the collar, will compel him to become dictator 
and save Rome. I have not read in any code of mor- 
ality, or of national law, that a man, to conquer the 
opportunity of serving his country for a consideration 
indispensable now to patriots, is bound to engage against 
a crowd of them in a free fight, after the fashion of 
hungry curs snarling and tearing one another to pieces 
over a bit of bone in the gutter. . And if this is not 
sufficient, dear Tintin, let me introduce you into a room 
where you will witness a scene the recollection of 
which never will fade awa}^ from my memory. Do 
you see that majestic octogenarian on his death-bed ? 
Do you see a boy standing by that bed ? Do you see 
those feeble and trembling hands laid on his head 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


289 


to bless, whilst these words are addressed to him : ‘ Son 
of a cherished daughter, you are still very young, and 
yet I commit to your care your widowed mother. Be 
dutiful and loving to her, and her support through life. 
My career has been very long, and, when I review it 
at this solemn hour, I see nothing in it which makes 
me afraid of meeting my God and Creator, who now 
summons me to His presence. My conscience is calm 
and my death is serene, as you see. I have never vol- 
untarily wronged any one, and no man, or woman, can 
address to me a just reproach. Live as I have done, 
that you may die as I die. Whatever may be your 
temptations, and whatever the errors into which you 
may be betrayed, for some are inseparable from human 
nature, be sure to keep clear of such as would make 
you forfeit your own esteem. Be always a gentleman 
from the root of your hair to the very sole of your feet 
and in the very marrow of your bones. March steadily 
in the path of honor, although it may bristle with 
thorns that will tear your flesh at every step, for the 
path of honor is also the path of true religion, l^ow, 
farewell, I bless you, and may God sanction the bless- 
ing !’ 

When he ceased to speak, I raised my eyes which 
streamed with tears. He was dead ; I gazed at his face. 
The expression left on it was that which one may sup- 
pose to be communicated by the sweet recollection of a 
life well spent. By heaven, Tintin Calandro, whenever 
I have been tempted into any action on the nature of 
which I entertained doubts at the time, I have stood 
before the portrait of him I speak of, and which I have 
always carried with me wherever I went, for I felt it 
to be my guardian angel and monitor, and I have said 
to the image of the departed : would you do it, grand- 
13 


290 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


father, if alive, or would you approve of it ? Believe 
it or not, as you please, I always have read the answer 
in those calm blue eyes which were fixed on me, and 
whenever my determination was taken according to 
that answer, I saw, or fancied I saw, a smile steal over 
his lips. You see, my friend, why I can not be a bob- 
tail and tag-rag politician, if you have any conception 
of what I should have to stoop to, and of the terror 
with which, in that case, I should approach that por- 
trait. You see also that I am as mad as you are, for, 
if you are under the influence of ghosts, I am under 
the spell of a painted canvas.” 

“ !N 0 madness, no madness,” exclaimed Tintin Calan- 
dro. “ The ancestral sonl was there, speaking to your 
soul in answer to your appeal. Spirits love to hover 
round their portraits and even to dwell in them, when 
held sacred by their descendants, or by those who 
loved them when in the flesh. O God ! O God ! what 
mysteries there are in this world, of which man knows 
nothing, because of his incredulity !” 

He seated himself on a tomb and buried his face in 
his hands, which was his habit when he felt some un- 
controlable emotion. After a while he looked up. 
Tears were trickling down his cheeks. “ I also have a 
portrait in my bed-chamber,” he said. “ When I die, 
which will be before long, it shall be committed to your 
care, with the request that every day, as my represen- 
tative, you kneel before it and do homage to her whom 
you will see for the first time, and whose eyes will beam 
on you as if still instinct with life. Do that, and, with 
the consent of Almighty God, I will appear to you, and 
give you such proof of our spiritual existence after 
death and such comfort to your grieving soul, as I may 
be permitted to bring.” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


291 


At that moment, deafening shouts were heard and 
the tramp of many feet. It was a political procession 
filing otf alongside of the walls of the cemetery with 
flags and emblematical devices, for we were on the eve 
of a presidential election. They had a band of music 
marching in front of them. Suddenly the electrifying 
notes of the Marseillaise burst upon us. “ What ? 
what ? what is that shrieked Tin tin Calandro, his 
whole frame quivering with intense excitement, and his 
eye flashing with that wild light peculiar to insanity. 
“ A J acobin club ! A procession of cut-throats ! It is 
the rising of the people ! The upheaving of the sewers ! 
A torrent bursting from hell ! They are the demons of 
faubourgs St. Marceau and St. Antoine.” He looked 
round terror-struck, as if for help. “Beat them back,” 
he shouted with frantic energy. “ Keep them ofl*, 
charge them, give us time to fly. Where are the body- 
guards ? O God ! It is too late. O horror ! Do you 
see that fiend there ? — there, there — the fiend in human 
shape who carries on a pike that angelic head dripping 
with gore. It is her head — the head of beauty, virtue 
and innocence ! It is the noblest blood that ever flowed 
in mortal veins.” 

Poor Tintin fell into convulsions, uttering the most 
dismal yells of agony. I took him in my arms as if he 
had been a child, for his diminutive and emaciated 
body only weighed a few pounds, and I flew rather 
than ran across the cemetery to my friend’s humble 
abode. I knocked at the door with such force as to 
batter it down. It was promptly opened, however, and 
an old negro woman whom I knew, and whom every- 
body else knew in New Orleans under the appellation 
of Zabet, surnamed the “ philosopher,” made her ap- 
pearance. “ It is not the first time,” she said, “ that I 


292 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


have seen him in this condition. Carry him to bed. 
This will last some days, but, with tender and careful 
nursing, he will recover, poor thing !” She opened an 
inside door, and, for the first time, I entered Tin tin 
Calandro’s bed-chamber, which was the second room 
from the street. It was plain and rude enough ; it 
looked like the cell of an anchorite. A few hard 
planks, raised above the floor and covered with a thin 
mattress, constituted his bed. At its head a crucifix 
was appended. There were two or three straw-bottom- 
ed chairs, a dilapidated sofa, a Yankee wooden clock, 
a round pine- wood table in the centre with a copper 
candlestick and his violin, a wash-stand in a corner with 
a cracked bowl and pitcher, a Bible and a complete 
edition of Swedenborg’s works resting on dusty shelves. 
Above the mantelpiece of a chimney which looked as 
if fire had not been made in it for years, hung a large 
frame which, as I conjectured, contained the portrait 
of which he had spoken. I say that I conjectured, be- 
cause the painting, whatever it was, happened to be 
covered with a thick black crape veil. I wanted to go for 
a physician, but the negress, with some degree of scorn 
at the suggestion, I thought, said that it was not neces- 
sary, and that she knew what was to be done better 
than any doctor. Seeing that the patient was a little 
more calm, although still delirious, and having perfect 
confidence in his nurse, I retired, and, on my way 
home, I became so absorbed in turning over in my 
mind certain suspicions which had been produced by 
this late incident, that I ran foul of a lamp-post, against 
which I violently struck my head, and was near being 
picked up by the night-watch as a drunken man. 


CHAPTER XXV. 


OLD ZABET THE BLACK WOMAN, AND HER PHILOSOPHY. 

As Zabet bad predicted, the illness of Tintin Calan- 
dro continued several days. I passed most of my time 
in watching over my suffering friend. He had recover- 
ed his senses at last, but great debility had been the 
result of the violent fever which had followed the 
paroxysms of insanity which I had witnessed in the 
graveyard. I had improvised for myself a sort of bed 
in a room which preceded the chamber of Tintin, and 
w^hich was dignified with the name of parlor. There I 
slept every night, to be, when wanted, in attendance on 
one who was for me an object of love and admiration, 
notwithstanding the mental infirmity with which he 
was afilicted. I must also confess that I was attracted 
to him by an intense curiosity excited by the mystery 
which shrouded the existence of one, who evidently was 
very different in reality from what he wished -to appear. 
I had for companion in my vigils the faithful Zabet, who 
entertained me with amusing stories of the colonial life 
of our ancestors, and of whom I shall proceed to give 
a biographical sketch. I think that she is quite worthy 
of it, as one of those singular characters possessed of a 
decidedly marked physiognomy, who abounded in the 
Louisiana of the past, and who seem to have since 
withered and disappeared under the leveling system by 
which everybody is made as much like everybody else 

( 293 ) 


294 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


as a sheep is like another sheep. We have sunk to the 
platitude of monotonous and uniform mediocrity. 

For the population of the past Zabet was as much of 
an institution as the city council, or GaMldo^ and as 
curious and favorite a monument in flesh and blood, as 
the cathedral was in brick and mortar, or the antiquated 
convent of the IJrsulines in Conde street. At the time 
I met her at Tintin Calandro’s, she pretended to liave 
run a career of very near a hundred years. She was 
born in the house of Madam de Gauvrit, the widow 
of an officer who had served under Bienville, the founder 
of New Orleans. The widow had made a pet of the 
young negress, and had emancipated her by testament. 
Elizabeth, or Zabet, as she was called by contraction, 
after having acquired her freedom, had successively 
hired herself out as a chambermaid and hair-dresser to 
several of the most aristocratic ladies of the colonial 
epoch. The word aristooratlG is here correctly employ- 
ed, because there was then an aristocracy in Louisiana ; 
and it is now ridiculously used and misapplied, because 
there is no longer among us a legitimate shadow of any- 
thing of the sort, for our society is thoroughly plebeian 
and democratic. But to return to Zabet. Although 
she knew neither how to read nor write, she spoke very 
pure and even elegant French, without being aware 
of it and without being acquainted with one single 
grammatical rule, but merely from the force of memory, 
association and habit. The magpie of Horace, or Yirgil, 
if they had one, must have chattered in metrical 
language. I have in my possession a letter of one of 
the beauties of the court of Louis XY. The style is as 
classical as that of a muse, and the orthography as bad 
as that of a cook. The last lady whom Zabet had served 
was the wife of the colonial prefect Laussat, who hand- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


295 


ed over Louisiana to the United States after having re- 
ceived it from Spain, like a decanter of wine, or a 
sponge cake, which circulates round the convivial table. 
The day on which the French flag was lowered before the 
American almost broke Zabet’s heart. She wept as if 
the greatest calamity had befallen her. On being asked 
what was the matter with her, she replied that she did 
not know what to do for a living, and that her former 
occupation was gone. 

‘‘ I have heard,” she said, ‘‘ that this new government 
proclaims that all white folks are equal. Well, if the 
old French woman who sells sausages in the market- 
place is as good as the wife of Governor Claiborne, 
then there are no longer ladies in the land, for, since 
aunty, the pork-pie seller, cannot rise above what she 
is, it is clear that madam the governess must come 
down to her, in order that they both may be on the 
same level. Having always waited on ladies, I am not 
going to wait on any other of my sex of an inferior de- 
gree, however rich their dresses may be, and whatever 
may be the loads of diamonds they carry on their 
heads, or round their necks ; and besides, if, according 
to this government, all white women are equal, although 
one is nothing but a stinking rag, and the other a piece 
of silk embroidered with gold, I don’t comprehend 
why my black skin makes me inferior to a white female 
thief, or a white mushroom of the gutter, to whom I 
feel that I am much superior by my feelings and educa- 
tion. Therefore, in my humble opinion, I am as much 
entitled as she is to be the equal of anybody ; and 
please, how can I be a servant to my equal? Thafs 
my jyhilosojpTiy^ do you see. O Lord ! O Lord ! If I 
cannot be a chambermaid and a hair-dresser, as I used 
to be, how shall I live ?” 


296 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


But the grief of Zabet did not last long. She was a 
woman of spirit and action ; she kept her tvord, and 
ceased to be a menial. Her next appearance j in public 
was as a seller of delicious cakes which she delicately 
made with her own hands, and of pecans, those luscious 
nuts so much appreciated in Louisiana. She stationed 
herself under the porch of the cathedral, and, as she 
knew everybody that she cared to know, and was 
reciprocally known, and as she had always been a 
favorite with the elite of the population, she carried on 
a brisk trade. She was complimented on her spirited 
resolution to be independent in a free country, and 
pieces of silver rained into her basket. To all her blue 
blooded patrons who had a kind word for her, she be- 
haved with the highflown courtesy of the old regime 
to which she was so much attached, and was profuse in 
humble thanks expressed in well set phrases. If any 
allusion was made to her change of occupation, she 
would say : ‘‘It is as evident as the Holy Yirgin is the 
mother of God, that, if one cannot live by the dressing- 
comb, one must live by the broomstick; and, if not by 
the broomstick, let it be by the wash-tub, or in any 
other way, so it be honest. Ho you see, thafs my 
jpTiilosopJiy ^ and old Quemper, the schoolmaster, • has 
told me that it is as good as any other : and old Quera- 
per knows everything on earth.” 

When church hours had elapsed, Zabet would migrate 
from the porch of the cathedral to the arcades of the 
court-house next to it. There she was in the way of 
the lawyers, judges and jurors, who seldom passed her 
without stopping for a little chat, when they had any 
time to spare, for she was keen and sarcastic, old Zabet, 
a sort of black Diogenes in petticoat. Faith ! She had 
a tongue as sharp pointed as her needle, and, when she 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


297 


chose, she was very entertaining. Moreau Lislet, Living- 
ston, ^Cazureau, Grymes, Judge Martin, and other lumin- 
aries of the bar and bench, would linger before her bask- 
et, picking up a handful of her pecans, and, whilst crack- 
ing them, would crack jokes with her, and would ask for 
some information on the usages and habits of the last 
century, and laugh at some scraps of good humored 
scandal, or some piquant anecdote which she would re- 
late ; for old Zabet was a living chronicle and a pic- 
turesque painter of past things and events. When she 
sold her merchandise to those she liked, she was all 
smiles and graciousness, and had always something 
pleasant to say. Those she disliked were treated with 
the utmost inditference. She would hand her cakes or 
nuts to them with a sort of grim solemnity of manner, 
without looking at them, and would pocket their money 
in silence. Sometimes, when their backs were turned, 
she would toss up her head and cast at them a glance 
full of intense disgust. In the beginning of the even- 
ing, and as the sun went down, she would operate an- 
other migration, and station herself at that entrance of 
Jackson square which is in front of the cathedral, 
where all the promenaders who came there to inhale 
some fresh air were bound to pass by her. She would 
examine with a critical eye all those who went by, and, 
when she had by her side some ebony or orange colored 
female friend, to whose discretion she could trust, she 
would thus unbosom herself to her companion, particu- 
larly when in a dyspeptic or sour humor, which happen- 
ed occasionally, for Zabet, in common with many other 
philosophers like herself, was not exempt from being 
fretted by those vexations of life which frequently fol- 
low too close on each other’s heels : 

‘‘ 0 dear ! O dear ! Look at that popinjay. How he 
13 * 


298 


FEJ^NANDO DE LEMOS. 


swells ! He thinks that he is somebody, because he has 
a sugar plantation. Bless me! He forgets that his 
grandfather used to hlaolien the shoes of Governor 
Galvez, and that the governor tossed to him that piece 
of land, like a penny to a beggar, as a reward for his 
clever exercise of the brush. My stars 1 Gossip, if you ain’t 
afraid of being struck blind, look at that other fellow yon- 
der, the marquis of cotton bags, whose purse is so fat and 
whose brain is so thin. I heard him say, the other day, 
that his family was the best in the State. O Christ 1 
That old Zabet should hear such things, and not dare to 
open her lips 1 Why, why, dear gossip, his grandfather 
was a convict, who, harnessed like a horse, used to pull 
the Government’s barges up the river. Ha 1 ha ! Shut 
up your umbrella, my gossip, the rain is over, sure ; 
for here is a walking rainbow. See how she struts, 
Madame La Princesse, with all her colors flying ! Up- 
on my word 1 She thinks she is some pumpkins, because 
she wears a cashmere shawl and a velvet dress, although 
the weather is almost suflbcating. She don’t permit 
one of her black girls to lift up her head in her pres- 
ence. If the poor thing raises her eyes, she is called 
insolent, as if a cat was not permitted to look at a king. 
To be sure, she ought to have plenty of dresses in store, 
and she ought also to know how to make them, for her 
mother was the milliner of the baroness of Carondelet. 
Give way, give way, mercy on me 1 That dashing 
equipage, with those crazy bay colored horses, has almost 
knocked my basket otf the hanquette and run over me. 
Jeremiah! What changes in this world ! I have seen the 
father of their proprietor standing behind the coach of 
Governor Miro !” Thus would Zabet vent her spleen ; 
but she would invariably wind up with : “ Patience ! 
patience ! There is no more wisdom in quarreling with 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


299 


upstarts than in picking burrs. I will sell them *iny 
cakes, and .... spit. Thaf s my philosophy ^ 

Sometimes, in the midst of ber pungent remarks, 
Zabet’s face would assume an expression of triumph. 
“ At last, at last !” she would exclaim. “ I see one of 
our old blooded stock. Here is a gentleman coming, 
and no mistake. There is royal blood for you, gossip, 
mark it, and know it again when you see it. Pll get up 
and courtesy.” Or, look at that timid lady, modestly 
and plainly dressed, who walks as if she was afraid of 
being in the way of somebody. Eoyal blood again, 
gossip, royal blood ! May God bless her for ever ! 
Honor to whom honor is due. Thafs my philosophy. 
Old Zabet cannot be deceived. She knows who is who, 
and which is which. There is no fooling her with false 
colors. She knows what milk every baby has sucked, 
and she can tell, a mile off, a canary bird from a jack- 
daw. But mum ! To be silent and not open my lips 
when the cold wind would give me the tooth- ache, is 
my philosophy r 

Apart these outbursts of feelings in which she occa- 
sionally indulged when she could be heard only by con- 
fidential ears, Zabet was naturally affable and kind, and 
was a great favorite with high and low, notwithstand- 
ing her studied reserve toward the latter. Even chil- 
dren seemed to entertain for her a sentiment of venera- 
tion, and abstained from plaguing her. It is true that 
she was fond of them, and generally had an apple or a 
cake to give. They called her : old aunty that will 
never die and the only liberty they were ever known 
to take with her in a playful manner, was to say : old 
aunty, how are you to-day? It is said that you will 
never die. It is your philosophy, we hope, to live for 
ever and give us apples. Is it not?” The sum total 


300 


FEJiNANBO DE LEMOS. 


of human excellence, according to her peculiar notions, 
was to have royal blood. When, speaking of an individual, 
she said sententiously : royal blood,” she had blown the 
last and finishing blast of the trumpet of praise ; nothing 
was to be added. I once asked her what she meant by 
royal blood. She replied that she meant those to whom 
kings had given a small picture, or design, which 
they wore on their seals, or on the pannels of their car- 
riages, or which they hung up in frames at home. 
Thus a coat-of-arms and royal blood had become insep- 
arably connected in Zabet’s mind. On one occasion, I 
maliciously asked her what she thought of the family 
of Grandmaison. ‘‘ Extra royal blood,” she answered. 

How is it then, Zabet,” I said, “ that Eugene Grand- 
maison is such a conceited, mean, perfidious, stupid, 
good-for-nothing wretch, that a cur would hardly con- 
descend to be fed by him ?” She looked much distressed 
by my question, and, after a little cogitation, she re- 
plied : “I must confess that it is a thing beyond my 
comprehension, and which grieves me to the heart. I 
cannot account for it. There must have been some- 
thing wrong in the hatching, somehow or other. The 
devil must be at the bottom of it. But still, royal 
blood is royal blood. ThaVs my philosophy P 

Once, in 1815, on her being pointed out to General 
Jackson, as he happened to pass by the cathedral, he 
stopped before her basket, picked a few of the nuts, for 
which he gave her a dollar, shook hands with her, in- 
quired about her health, and expressed his satisfaction 
at her looking so well notwithstanding her great age. 
When he departed, Zabet, looking long and steadfastly 
at the retiring hero, said to the by-standers : “ The gen- 
eral is a stranger to me ; I know nothing of him. But 
he is royal blood, sure ; else he would not have behaved 
as he did. That my philosophy P 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


301 


The old woman was fond of visiting me, because she 
had discovered that I never tired of listening to her 
anecdotes and stories, which were so graphically de- 
scriptive of the feelings and manners of the past. How 
different was that past from the present when seen 
through the spectacles of the narrator ! On entering 
my apai-tment, she used to sink into an arm-chair after 
having deposited her basket on the floor, 4)low for a few 
minutes, and exclaim, when she had some cause of vex- 
ation to complain of : My son,” for she always ad- 
dressed me by that endearing appellation, “ my heart 
burns,” and then she would relate what had excited her 
indignation. 

Aunty,” I said to her on one of those occasions, 1 
wonder that you allow your heart to hum so often. 
It might consume it in the end. This is not sound phil- 
osophy on your part.” 

Why not ?” she replied with vivacity. ‘‘ A heart 
that is not susceptible of burning is like rotten wood. 
It is not good for any thing ; there is nothing in it. It 
is as cold as ice and lifeless. I pray God that my heart 
may never cease to bum, whenever there is a cause for 
it. That'^s my philosophy. Ah! This poor world is 
now topsy turvy. Who had told me, when I dressed the 
hair of the Countess of Galvez, that old Zabet would see 
such times as these would have killed me outright. 
But old age becomes tough, and can bear much afflic- 
tion. It is hard though, very hard, when I meet a 
docharV^ in the market place, or in the streets, to hear 
myself thus addressed in an imperious tone : ‘ Hegress, 
how dare you to brush by me so close ? Keep your dis- 
tance. Do n’t you know who I am ?’ O Lord 1 

* This word in the Creole vocabulary of the blacks in Lc uisiana means 
a person of very low birth. 


302 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


O Lord ! I say to myself : You are riglit, darling. 
Do n’t I know who you are ? Dirt, dirt, dirt !” and she 
w^ould spit with disgust. Well, well,” she would say, 
resuming the subject, “ thank God, there is a compen- 
sation for every evil ; for, the next moment, I meet 
royal blood, and it is a kind shaking of my bony black 
hand, and making way to me as to a lady, and, ‘ good- 
bye, Aunty Zabet, remember to come and see me, and 
get a bottle of wine, or a dress, or something else that 
may please you.’ This shows that we must take things 
as Heaven sends them, although the heart may be per- 
mitted to burn a little, and no harm done. That 's my 
jphilosojphy. But the world is getting worse every day, 
my son. There is no denying that. Tor instance, you 
are a very nice young man, blood royal, and all that, 
but you are not to be compared with your father, and 
neither he nor you could have come up to your grand- 
father’s standard, Governor Lemos. It would have 
been worth traveling a whole day to see him bow to a 
lady, or take a pinch of snuff. You can’t conceive 
what that was.” 

Evidently old Zabet was laudator temporis act% as 
Horace says. Tradition reported that she had been 
rather fast in her youth, although she was now very 
pious. When this was hinted to her, she took it in 
good part. “Admitting that to be true,” she would 
say laughing, and showing a wonderful set of white 
teeth of which she was very proud, “ admitting that to 
be true, pleasure and the ball-room when young, prayer 
and the church when old, thafs my philosophy 

She had accidentally become acquainted with Tintin 
Calandro, and had taken hugely to him. She had soon 
persuaded herself that he was a person who, like a child, 
required to be looked after, and had discovered that, 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


303 


not only was he partially mad, but also, that he nour- 
ished in his soul a secret sorrow, which he did not per- 
mit to he probed even in the most delicate manner. 
During twenty years, before attending to her own avo- 
cations, which I have described, she had, early in the 
morning, performed the functions of housekeeper for 
Tintin Calandro, and prepared his modest breakfast 
consisting of two eggs and a cup of coffee, and, in the 
evening, before retiring, she attended to his frugal sup- 
per which was made up of a bowl of hot milk, a crust 
of bread, and a dish of vegetables, for Tintin Calandro 
never took any dinner. He never eats,” said Zabet, 
between sun up and sun down. Is it not queer ? But 
the poor thing is crazy, and as harmless and innocent 
as a new-born baby. He will go to paradise, sure.” 
Notwithstanding the long duration of these intimate 
relations between Zabet and Tintin Calandro, she knew 
nothing of his past life, except that, many years ago, on 
his arrival in New Orleans, he had w^aited on the bish- 
op, had remained several hours closeted wnth him, and, 
through the recommendation and influence of that pre- 
late, had obtained the position which he now occupied. 

Not only had that excellent creature, old Zabet, 
watched over Tintin Calandro with sisterly affection, 
but, as if she still had more time and benevolence to 
spare, she had also adopted a white orphan boy, to 
w^hose education and support she devoted her hard 
earnings. On her being asked why she had not chosen 
one of her own race, she had replied : A white woman 
took care of me in the cradle, and I, in my turn, will 
take care of a white child. Gratitude is my philosophy 
Such is the associate I had when nursing Tintin Ca- 
landro, and, in two weeks, we had the gratification of 
seeing him as well as before. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


CHRISTMAS EVE. — THE MUSICIAJIf AND THEOLOGIAN. 

It was on Christmas Eve. In the morning I had 
received a note from Tintin Calandro, informing me 
that, at night, he would give a concert to the spirits of 
the dead. I had been invited to several parties for that 
evening. I was hesitating which to accept, when Tin- 
, tin’s note was delivered. I no longer hesitated, I de- 
clined them all. I knew that a feast was prepared for 
me alone, which in excellence Avould far exceed any 
other which could be offered. Fortunately the weather 
was beautifully serene and mild. When night came, 
not a cloud could be discovered on the horizon. The 
sky was transparent, all the stars were at their post. 
The smallest and the most distant gleamed with vivid 
distinctness. They all shone with a brilliancy which 
seemed to me unusual even in our Southern climate. I 
met Tintin Calandro walking thoughtfully in one of the 
alleys of the cemetery. As I approached, he signified 
to me with a wave of his hand not to address him. I 
seated myself on a tomb, and waited. Tintin paced to 
and fro, wrapped up in meditation. Suddenly he took 
his violin, and seemed to try its powers by a magnifi- 
cent prelude, in which he attacked and conquered all 
the difficulties of his art. Instinct with life and pas- 
sion, the bow moved with electric rapidity, and, under 
(304) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


305 


its fiery contact, the strings glowed with sympathetic 
ardor, drawing increasing inspiration from the very 
sounds emitted with such profuse wealth and variety 
under the magic touch of genius. It was the eloquence 
of harmony. The instrument had assumed a soul ; it 
had became a living thing. It was the enthusiasm of 
the poet — the voice of the prophet reading in the skies 
the decrees of Jehovah. One could almost have fan- 
cied hearing it shout like the Sybil of Yirgil: Deus, 
ecee Deus. “ The Grod comes, here is the God.” I lis- 
tened, as it were with a feeling of delightful intoxica- 
tion, and the inspired musician laid before me the fol- 
lowing poem, which he had the marvelous art to make 
me understand as clearly as if it had been written down 
in human language : 

‘‘ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was 
with God, and the Word was God.”, Christ was there. 
“ Before Abraham was, I am.” The crucified of Je- 
rusalem was present at the creation. Hallelujah ! hal- 
lelujah ! Then came a chorus of angels rejoicing at the 
birth of man, followed by a grand adagio picturing the 
holy repose of Paradise, Adam and Eve walking hand- 
in-hand in the presence of the Lord in blissful inno- 
cence, their lips whispering to each other the chaste 
language of conjugal love, and their hearts full of grat- 
itude for their creator. They separate, Adam being 
called away by some manly occupation, and Eve to at- 
tend to her favorite fiowers. Sweet melodies float 
around her as she stroUs from one perfumed bush to the 
other in dreamy contentedness. Suddenly a prolonged 
hiss is heard. It is the serpent’s. The bow of the mu- 
sician glides swiftly over the strings of his instrument 
in imitation of the movements of the wily reptile on the 
flowery ground. 'The tempter’s flattery is addressed to 


306 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


the willing ears of deluded vanity in the softest and 
most voluptuous strains, which swelled gradually into 
the loud and thick-rushing notes of exultation at ex- 
pected triumph, when the fatal asseveration w^as made 
to the woman : Eat ; ye shall not surely die ; for God 
doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your 
eyes shall he opened ; and ye shall be as gods, know- 
ing good from evil.” A world of sorrows ensues. 
What wailings ! what gnashing of teeth ! what lamen- 
tations ! Thunder seems to roll round the sublime mu- 
sician. It is the curse of God on the guilty pair — di- 
vine wrath tempered with mercy — a Saviour is prom- 
ised — the Saviour eternally existing from the beginning. 
But, before he shall come, ages must elapse. Mean- 
while the reign of the arch enemy begins. Listen : the 
marvelous instrument bursts into bacchanalian songs — 
a wild chaos of sounds expressive of the demoniacal 
raptures of Hell, which sings the epithalamium of the 
nuptials of the sons of God with the daughters of man. 
Lo, the roar of the cataracts of Heaven ! The cataracts 
falling — falling — falling ! The seas — the vast seas swell- 
ing — swelling — swelling until the liighest peak of the 
earth is covered ! The deluge is universal, and the ark 
calmly floats over the watery grave of the world. 
The seed, however, from which the Saviour is to come, 
is spared. But again, the most syren-like and ener- 
vating music that ever greeted human ears luUs the 
very wind. It is the worship of Astarte, or Yenus, the 
adoration of the senses, the deiflcation of the flesh, the tri- 
umph of the idols over the one God. Paganism reigns 
supreme, and the degradation of mankind is complete. 
A chorus of rejoicing demons appalls the heart ; over 
the prostrate form of the human race hope wings its 
flight, and despair howls its maniac laughter. But, O 


FEJiJVANDO DE LEMOS. 


307 


joy ! Hear the angel’s salutation to Mary. It arrests 
departing hope and gladdens despair. The miraculous 
child is born ! The long-silent harp of David vibrates 
again, and repeats one of the most soul-stirring songs 
of the royal poet and prophet : “ The Lord said unto 
my Lord : sit thou at my right hand, till I make thine 
enemies thy foot- stool thus giving assurance of salva- 
tion to mankind. Then comes the wild barbaric clamor 
of Oriental music. It is the adoration of the Magi, 
which is followed by floods of melodies poured down 
from the most distant heights of heaven. It is the 
adoration of the celestial hosts. Hallelujah ! Glory 
to God above, and peace to man on earth !” The in- 
strument stopped. The sudden silence was not without 
its efiect. It seemed to continue and increase the over- 
whelming influence which held me spell-bound. I 
imagined myself before the manger of Bethlehem and 
I fell on my knees in mute prayer. When I rose, I saw, 
to my amazement, Tintin Calandro standing erect on a 
tomb, and, from that elevated position, looking round 
as if his eyes were surveying a large audience spread 
far and wide before him. 

“ I see here many,” he said, who, in the flesh, 
doubted that spiritual existence of which they are now 
convinced from their own personal experience. I see 
also many who, in their new existence, have retained 
their disbelief in Christ as well as their vicious and 
wicked idiosyncracies. They were not Christians in the 
world of the living, and they have not become Chris- 
tians in the world of the dead. But I tell you all, on 
this anniversary of the birth of the Saviour of mankind, 
that it is not too late for such of you as are unbelievers, 
to throw yourselves into his loving arms and accept his 
tendered forgiveness. I know" that some learned men 


308 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


have said, for it is the privilege of learning to raise 
donhts on all subjects, where is the proof that Christ 
ever existed ? Had they never read, or had they for 
gotten the much admired Tacitus, the great historian, 
a skeptic and a scholar like themselves ? Had they not 
been told that it pleased Hero to set Home on fire, in 
order to give to himself a representation of the burn- 
ing of Troy, whilst he sang with accompaniment of 
the lyre Virgil’s description of the destruction of that 
city ? Did he not afiect to be indignant at being sus- 
pected of such a deed ? It was an atrocity of what he, 
the excellent Hero, was incapable. It became his duty, 
as he pretended, to ferret out those who had perpetra- 
ted the grim joke of burning Home and setting it at 
his door. What did he finally imagine to divert sus- 
picion from himself? He accused and prosecuted an 
‘ immense multitude ’ of men, writes Tacitus — ingens 
multitudo. Who Avere they ? ‘ Those who were com- 

monly called Christians.’ Quos vulgus Christianos 
appellahat. Why were they commonly called Chris- 
tians ? Tacitus will again answer you : ‘ that name was 
derived from Christ ’ — auctor nominis hujus Christus, 
Who was that Christ ? Come forth, Tacitus, and con- 
tinue to give your testimony. He says : ‘ that Christ, 
who, under the reign of Tiberius, had been put to death 
by the procurator Pontius Pilatus.’ Christus qui 
Tiberio imjoeritante joer jprocuratorem Pentium Pilor- 
turn sup^lioio affectus erat. Put to death in Jerusalem 
only twenty-seven years before the confiagration of 
Home, and yet those who believed in liim in the latter 
city already formed an ‘ immense multitude.’ The credo 
of the apostles is repeated almost word for word in Tacitus. 
It is impossible to agree more explicitly on a statement of 
facts, and it is equally impossible to suppose that there 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


309 


was a conspiracy between Tacitus and tbe apostles to 
invent Christ. The apostles might have been accused of a 
pious fraud to establish a new religion for some purpose 
of their own, or they might have been suspected of so 
much partiality or zeal for the doctrine which they 
preached, that they might have been rejected as pre- 
judiced witnesses, but not so with Tacitus, who cor- 
dially hated and despised what he designated ‘as a 
mischievous superstition which, temporarily suppressed, 
had again broken out not only in Judea, where the evil 
bad originated, but even in Rome.’ These are his 
words. Hejyressa qucB in jprmens exitialis sujperstitio 
rursus erumjpehat, non modo per Judeam originem 
hvgus malij sed^per urbem etiam. Thus the existence 
of Christ, the judgment of Pilate, the crucifixion, and 
the incredible spread of the ‘ superstition ’ which 
originated in those events, are recorded by the im- 
mortal pen of Tacitus. 

“ What shall I say of that ‘ immense multitude ’ — 
ingens multitudo — ^the contemporaries of Christ — ^who 
also proclaimed that he had lived and been crucified 
under Pontius Pilate ? What was that multitude ? Was it 
made up of cowardly and prevaricating fellows of low 
degree who propagated a falsehood with whispering 
breath and in dark corners ? 'No. It was composed of 
the educated and uneducated, of the high in rank and 
of the humble in station, of experienced age and of 
artless youth, of the chaste virgin, of the virtuous matron 
as well as of the repentant courtezan, of the scarred war- 
rior and the timid civilian. What did they do with as- 
tounding and unwavering perseverance ? They firmly 
and openly maintained what they knew to be true. 
Primo Gorrepti qui fatehant. Under what circumstan- 
ces ? When arrested, when brought before the tribunals 


310 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


of irritated and prejudiced judges, when death stared 
them in the face, when infuriated wild beasts were 
ready to spring upon them at the bidding of a ferocious 
populace. Would those who, after eighteen hundred 
years, maintain that Christ never existed, be willing 
to shed one drop of their blood, or endure the slightest 
torture, to assure the triumph of their negation? 
Surely not. What becomes then of such negation, 
when met by the affirmation of those countless martyrs 
who have continued to die to this day in an uninter- 
rupted line of soldiers of the cross, which, starting from 
Calvary, now encircles the globe ? Tacitus informs us 
that the followers of Christ were ‘hated’ — invisos. 
Why ? Because of their purity of morals which sepa- 
rated them from a corrupt world, and because Christ 
himself had predicted to his disciples that enmity. 

‘ They were less convicted,’ says Tacitus, ‘ of the 
crime of arson,’ of which they were accused by Nero, 

‘ than of hatred against mankind.’ Hand perendi in 
crimine inoendii quam odio humani generis convicti 
sunt. Hatred against mankind ! It is not astonishing 
that he who knew so little what Christianity was, should 
have called it a mischievous superstition. 

“ Sixty-two years after the death of Christ mentioned 
by Tacitus, under the reign of Trajan, Pliny the 
younger, another classical authority, and proconsul of 
Bithynia and Pontus, writes to the emperor to consult 
him on the manner in which he is to proceed against 
the Christians. ‘ A very large number of people,’ he 
says, ‘ of every age, of every rank and of both sexes 
are compromised in this matter, and others will, in the 
course of time, be in the same condition. Not only 
the cities, but also the villages and the country are in- 
undated with this contagious superstition.’ Remark 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


311 


this expression : inundated. Could there he such an 
inundation without an undoubted and undeniable cause ? 
Thus, at that enlightened epoch, in those days which 
immediately followed the luminous age of Augustus, 
the crucifixion of Christ in Jerusalem was an acknowl- 
edged fact of general notoriety. Could an ‘ immense 
multitude,’ spreading from Judea to Eome, have be- 
lieved in a fact alleged to have happened only twenty- 
two years before, within a short distance of the- capital 
of the world, if that fact had not actually taken place ? 
Would not the Eoman authorities, who were so anxious 
to suppress what they called a mischievous superstition, 
have not said to the deluded people : ^ You. fools, the 
whole of Jerusalem testifies that no Christ ever existed 
there. His crucifixion is a fiction. There never was 
a Pontius Pilate.’ But they could not say then what 
is now said. It could too easily have been disproved. 
They knew that they could not hold such language to 
the contemporaries of Christ, to those perhaps who had 
witnessed his agony on the cross of Calvary. They 
denied his divinity and his miracles ; but his existence 
and the peculiarity of his death. Oh ! no. This would 
have been too absurdly mendacious. Such a piece of 
folly was reserved for the modern efirontery of skepti- 
cism, after the lapse of eighteen hundred years of ac- 
quiescence on that point. But the Jews themselves, 
who deny the divinity of Christ, admit his existence 
and his miracles in that celebrated work called the 
Talmud. They even confirm the performance of his 
miracles which they attribute to a wrong cause, such, 
for instance, as his having obtained superhuman powers 
from the possession of the real name of God, which he 
had stolen from the sanctuary of the temple. 

Two hundred^ and fifty years before Christ, under 


312 


FEI^NANDO DE LEMOS. 


the Egyptian king, Ptolemy Philadelphus, and by 
his orders, the Old Testament was translated into 
Gieek, and thus made known, not only to the Greeks, 
but also tc the whole civilized world, among which 
that language was universally spread as the language 
of science, literature and the fine arts. In that Old 
Testament, thus translated, we find the predictions 
which announced the Messiah, and which therefore 
could not be subsequent interpolations. More than 
two thousand years before Christ, the Jewish nation 
was ushered into existence. Coeval with that national 
birth was the Messiahanic idea — the idea that this 
chosen people carried within its bosom a blessing which 
was to spread over the whole world. It is announced 
to Abraham, when ordered to move away to the land 
destined to him by the Lord. Years after, when he 
attempted to sacrifice his son Isaac in obedience to 
what he thought the will of God, he received a clearer 
and more positive assurance, that all the nations of the 
earth should be blessed, not in him, but in his posterity. 
The same prophecy is made to Isaac, and after him to 
Jacob, and, on his death-bed, Jacob himself gives a 
new sanction to the preceding predictions. To his sons 
assembled round him, and from whom were to spring 
the twelve tribes of Israel, he announces what is to 
happen to every one of them and the birth of the Sa- 
viour from the loins of Judah, on a predestined day 
which is to be marked by a particular event. 

‘‘ "When Israel, flying from Egypt, met the princes of 
Moab in arms on the banks of the Jordan, we again 
find on the lips of Balaam, a stranger to Israel, the 
announcement of the Messiah. Then comes the royal 
poet and prophet. In a psalm which glows with di- 
vine inspiration, and in which he speaks of the secrets 


FERN'ANDO DE LEMOS. 


313 


of heaven as if revealed to him, he thus announces 
them : ‘ The Lord hath said to me, Thou art mj son ; 
this day have I begotten thee.’ ‘ Ask of me, and I 
shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and 
the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.’ . . . 

“ When the days of the captivity of Israel were ap- 
proaching, several hundred years before Christ, Isaiah 
proclaimed his advent, his sufferings and his triumphs, 
with a clearness, a precision and a fullness of language 
^vhich cannot be surpassed, and which must remove all 
doubts even from the most incredulous mind. He 
speaks with the assurance and the lucidity of a histo- 
rian who has witnessed the facts which he relates. His 
words are so accurately descriptive that one would sup- 
pose him present at the performance of the grand 
drama of Calvary, and yet seven centuries separated 
him from the day on which it was acted. 

‘‘ One hundred years elapse since that prediction, and 
the people of Israel are captives in Babylon. To con- 
sole them, Daniel announces the coming of the Redeem- 
er six hundred years before it is to happen. He fixes 
the epoch and describes the circumstances attending it 
with an accuracy which future events proved to have 
been almost mathematical. It was the will of God 
that prophet after prophet should, from time to time, 
renew the assurance of the promised Messiah. Five 
hundred years were yet to elapse, when the voice of 
Haggai addressed the people of Israel in the same 
strain on the same subject. What a chain of evidence 
remaining unbroken through such a long series of ages 
and events, from Eve to whom God said ‘ that her seed 
should bruise the serpent’s head,’ down to the gener- 
ation among Avhich Christ was born ! 

‘‘ This belief in the coming of a miraculous personage 
14 


314 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


who was to change the face of the world, and redeem 
the human race from the abyss of woes in wliich it was 
plunged, was common to almost all the nations of anti- 
quity, however divers and distinct, and unconnected 
with one another. It was a uniform hope ; it was a 
universal tradition ; it was a dim recollection of a 
promise given by the infinite mercy tempering the rigor 
of an inevitable judgment, which inflicted punishment 
for some great crime perpetrated by man shortly after 
his creation. On the extreme confines of Asia, Confu- 
cius had spoken of the coming of the tr ue saint who 
was to bless and to save. Yirgil, referring in one of 
his immortal poems to the oracles of the Sybil of 
Cumae, had announced, in conformity with those 
oracles, the birth of a mysterious child, son of Jupiter, 
who was destined to efi*ace from the bosom of the earth 
the vestiges of the foot of the demon of iniquity, and 
to inaugurate a new order of things. ‘See,’ he says, 
‘ how, at the birth of that cherished child of the gods, 
the whole world is agitated and moved from its basis ; 
how all earth, and all the seas, and the heavens in their 
profoundest depths, and all things, rejoice at the bliss 
which the coming age is to bring.’ JSTot only had the 
world, in which there are so many difierences of belief 
and opinion, agreed as to that extraordinary expecta- 
tion, but. also as to the time for the )ccurrence of its 
realization. Tacitus, whom I have alieady quoted, and 
whom I love to quote to pagans, because he is for them 
an authority which they dare not impeach, says, when 
he comes to the reign of Yespasian: ‘It was a 
widely-spread conviction that, according to ancient sa- 
cerdotal writings, precisely at that epoch, the East was 
to prevail, and that men coming out of Judea were to 
possess themselves of the government of all things ! ’ 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


315 


The rationalistic philosophers of the 18th century, sub- 
jugated by the irresistible proof of the evidence bear- 
ing on that subject, had frequently admitted this 
unanimity of the expectation of a Messiah. Voltaire 
has written : ‘ It was from time immemorial a maxim 
among the Indians and the Chinese that i\iQsage would 
come from ihe East.'^ Yolney, in his celebrated anti- 
Christian work entitled ‘ the Ruins,’ has written this 
remarkable phrase : ‘ The sacred and mythological 

traditions of the past had spread throughout the whole 
of Asia the belief in a great mediator, a final judge, a 
future saviour, king, god, conqueror and legislator, who 
would bring back the Golden Age, and deliver man- 
kind from the reign of evil.’ Another distinguished 
author, Boulanger, using a more sweeping phraseology, 
has declared : ‘ That all the nations of the earth had 
entertained an expectation of that kind.’ It was the 
Ilorthern Pole to which their hope pointed with the fi- 
delity of the magnetic needle, without their knowing 
that they were looking to the realization of tlie predic- 
tion of Jacob on his death-bed. 

Thus it was the traditional belief of man that his 
race had once committed some avTul transgression, for 
which it had been doomed to its present existence, and 
that a Redeemer was to come. That belief was more 
definite, more precise among the Jews ; it was inter- 
woven with their national life. The promised Messiah 
was the breath, the soul of Israel. His pre-existence 
went back to the creation of the world. Take the 
Messiah out of the Bible, and there is nothing left of it ; 
there is not an inch of solid ground on which Judaism 
can stand ; for a historical record, false in its main 
point, must be rejected in toto as being unreliable. But 
there is none which carries within itself such complete 


31G 


FERXANDO DE LEA/OS. 


evidence of its being true ; and wJien came tlie time 
for the accomplishment of that miracle whicli it an- 
nounced and which was to remain perpetual in its dura- 
tion, there appeared a man who said : ^ I am He.’ 
Who was that He ? A Jew of the tribe of Judah,' of 
the house of David, according to the prophecies. As 
long as he preached in the name of God and worked 
miracles to prove his mission, he was safe, although the 
doctrines which he proclaimed were not such as were 
acceptable to the rulers and authorities of Jerusalem. 
Besides, the self-sacrificing, poor and humble being, who 
exacted from his followers a complete renunciation of 
the goods of this world, was not the glorious and con- 
quering Messiah with whose reign the national vanity 
had fiattered itself. Any man in Israel had the right 
to assume, and assumed with impunity, the part of a 
prophet and of an envoy of God. But to say : ‘ I am 
God,’ was blasphemy, and that blasphemy was punish- 
ed with death. Hence the scene before the chief of the 
priests, when Jesus said : ^ Hereafter shall you see the 
son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and 
coming in the clouds of heaven.’ Then the high 
priest rent his clothes, saying : ‘ He hath spoken blas- 
phemy ; what further need have we of witnesses?’ 
Thus the Jews sentenced Christ to death in conformity 
with their laws. But the sentence could not be execu- 
ted without the permission and sanction of the Roman 
procurator who represented Csesar. Hence their taking 
him to Pilate ; hence the remark of that mao:istrate : 
‘What has that man done? I see no guilt in him.’ 
A Roman could not have spoken otherwise. For, ac- 
cording to Roman ideas, it was no crime for a man 
to say: ‘I am a god, or I descend from a god?’ 
And how natural was it also for a Roman to say with 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


317 


contemptnous indifference : ‘ He is a Jew ; lie is one of 
you ; he is subject to your laws ; he belongs to your 
jurisdiction ; do what you please with him. I wash 
my hands of it.’ If Jesus had been a Roman, the arm 
of Rome 'svould have been stretched for his protection. 
How natural also is the sneering answer, steeped in that 
cynicism of doubt which is but too often the result of 
what is called the highest degree of extreme civilization 
— a cynicism which is eclectic in its bearings and applica- 
tions, which precludes faith in anything, and which 
pricked its ears when hearing Jesus say that he an- 
nounced the truth ! The reply of the skeptic Roman 
of the Augustan age was : ‘ "What is truth V Is it not a 
simple and credible story ? So credible that one almost 
fancies ha\dng witnessed it. Do you doubt its authen- 
ticity, brethren of the spiritual world ? Ask the millions 
of Jews scattered over the face of the earth. Every 
one of them will say like one man : ‘ It is true, I was 
there.’ The Jew is imperishable ; he never changes. 
He was present on Calvary through his ancestors and 
saw what they saw. He will tell you that Christ was 
crucified, and that it was for blasphemy. Ha! ha! 
spirits, God knows what He is about. He foresaw that 
the existence of His son might be denied in the course 
of time, and He provided for it. He needed the Jews, 
to testify to certain things as a nation and in a body. 
Therefore He embalmed them as it were with His own 
hands to prevent their dissolution, and He made them 
what they are to serve His purposes. If instead of re- 
pudiating Christ, they had adopted him as their Mes- 
siah, it would have been said : out with them ! It 
is a conspiracy on their part, in order to assume a 
religious supremacy over the world by the propagation 
of this cunningly devised fable. They would have been 


318 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


witnesses suspected of interest ; they might have been 
accused of a pious fraud. But surely they are to be 
believed, when they attest the existence of one whom 
they rejected as an impostor and crucified, and whose 
death has ever been to them a bitter and abundant 
source of reproach and opprobrium, and of. indescrib- 
able suiferings for eighteen centuries. 

There would be as good grounds to doubt the exis- 
tence of Caesar and of Alexander as that of Christ. 
The historical records which relate the deeds of those 
two great men are not more authentic than those which 
recite the life of the Saviour. The deeds of the He- 
brew, as to their importance and the duration of their 
efiects, are far superior to those of the Greek and the 
Homan. "Who cared for Caesar or Alexander as soon 
as they had perished ? Who cares now for their mem- 
ory? Who would die, or undergo the most exquisite 
tortures of martyrdom, rather than not proclaim that 
they once existed, and that they still live, and are 
invisibly omnipresent, and are entitled to the same 
veneration which was accorded to them during their 
life time ? Who would have his limbs torn from his 
body, rather than not prostrate himself in the dust 
at the bare mention of their imperial names ? There 
are none. But at the time when the drama of Calvary 
was acted, and before the generation passed away that 
had witnessed it, thousands in Jerusalem and thousands 
in Kome, and elsewhere throughout the whole civilized 
world, were ready to die in the hands of the public ex- 
ecutioner and under the fangs of wild beasts, to main- 
tain in the face of a multitude howling for their blood, 
the truth of what they believed to be an unquestiona- 
ble historical fact. Is there another one supported by 
better proofs in unbroken concatenation ? You would 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


319 


in vain challenge heaven and earth to produce a more 
striking and marvelous co-operation of attestations, than 
were those successive predictions through a long series' 
of ages, which announced the happening of a particular 
event, and which were confirmed and justified by the 
manner in which it was in the end so strictly accom- 
plished. 

“ Thus it is established beyond the shadow of a doubt, 
by sacred and profane authorities, that, at the epoch of 
the highest civilization of the Eoman empire, there 
lived a man who declared himself to be God in a large 
and enlightened city of that empire, that an ‘ immense 
multitude,’ ingens multitudo^ believed it at the time, 
and that their number has- been steadily increasing ever 
since, during an uninterrupted series of eighteen hun- 
dred years. What a unique and unparalleled phenom- 
enon !” 


CHAFIEK XXm 


THE ELOQUENT MADMAN. 

“The Bible was the preface to the Gospels,” con- 
tinued Tintiu Calandro. “ Judaism was the vestibule 
of Christianity. I have shown you the spiritual pre-ex- 
istence of Christ in the Bible-; I will show you his bod- 
ily and actual existence in the Gospels. In Adam was 
the germ of Christianity ; in Jesus its full and final de- 
velopment. During the first two thousand years of the 
history of the Jewish people, it was in a state of incu- 
bation. During the last eighteen hundred years it has 
introduced itself into the history of all the civilized na- 
tions of the earth ; and that history could not be writ- 
ten, if it were attempted to suppress Christianity from 
its pages! You have seen the figure of Christ reflected 
from the clear mirror of the Biblical records. You 
have also seen it chiseled in the imperishable granite 
of Koman history by Tacitus, in which is repeated al- 
most verbatim the profession of faith of the apostles. 
Shall I call him St. Tacitus ? But no ; he is a pagan. 
From his annals let us pass to those of the apostles ? 
Do I not hear from behind yonder tomb a voice which 
says: ‘Where is the proof of the authenticity of the 
Gospels V Greater, I reply, than the proof of the au- 
thenticity of the works of Tacitus. That authenticity 
proves itself by its own internal evidence. The Gos- 
( 330 ) 


FEI^NANDO DE LEMOS. . 821 

pels were written by four different men, wlio manifestly 
did not consult together on the subject. They are as 
distinct as possible in their style and in the selection 
of what they relate, and yet every one of them so faith- 
fully and strikingly represents, under different aspects 
and circumstances, the same ineffable character, that 
their respective hands seem to be guided by the same 
inspiration. Had they attempted a fiction, they would 
not have possessed and exhibited this sublime uniform- 
ity of inventive creation. Take the Gospel of St. Mat- 
thew. If it i§ a work of the imagination, the author of 
it, as the inventor of Christ, would be as marvelous as 
Christ himself. So would St. Mark, so would St. Luke 
and St. John. One would be sufficiently wonderful, 
\)\}XfouT ! Hever. That is impossible. Besides, how 
can the authenticity of the Gospels be questioned, when 
it is recollected that they are nothing else than the 
public records of public facts ? The doctrines of Christ 
were preached, in the very beginning, on the recom- 
mendation and after the example of the Master, from 
the tops of houses, in the fields, and in the streets of 
cities. He was publicly put to death after a public 
trial. The Christian society which sprang from the 
cross was not a secret one. They, in less than twenty- 
two years since the death of Christ, had become, ac- 
cording to the testimony of Tacitus, an “immense mul- 
titude ,” — ingens multiPudo — disturbing the tranquillity 
of the master of the world. Fatebant^ they confessed 
openly their creed. In the face of such publicity of 
belief and doctrine, it is hard to imagine that the Gos- 
pels, when they appeared, should not have met with 
direct contradictions and refutations, if they had con- 
tained anything not in strict harmony with what was 
professed to be the well-known character of Christ, al- 
14 * 


322 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


ready received and worshiped as such by an ^ immense 
multitude,’ Although subsequently attacked by Celsus 
and Porphyry who lived, the former in the first and 
second century after Christ, and the latter in the second, 
that attack was not as to their authenticity. Nay, 
apocryphal gospels were published, which were imme- 
diately branded as such, and, like all counterfeits, only 
went to establish the value of the genuine article. The 
G-ospels therefore were only confirmatory and preserva 
tive of what was already known as true by the vast 
Christian community to whom they were addressed, 
and by whom they were accepted as coming from 
Apostolic authority. Hence what folly is it to deny 
now their authenticity ! It is a late folly, the folly of 
rationalism, the folly of infidelity reduced to despair 
before the irresistible evidence of truth, for infidelity 
well knows, that once the existence of Christ established 
and the history of his life admitted, acquiescence in 
his divinity must follow as an inevitable sequel. 

“ What mortal was ever heralded into the world like 
Jesus? Was there ever a man whose birth was an- 
nounced twenty centuries before it took place ? Cer- 
tainly none. Jesus is the only exception, and, if -in this 
exception he is above all men, then he must be more 
than man. Was there ever one among the sons of 
Adam who could show his own pre-existence like Jesus ? 
Then it follows that Jesus could not have been a man 
like us, but must have been the incarnation of the spirit 
of God. And Avas his life like the life of any man that 
ever preceded or followed him to this A^ery day ? 
What is the synopsis of that w'onderful life? Try to 
realize it in all its sublime grandeur, if you can, and 
transport yourselves back to the time and to the coun- 
try in which he made his appearance in the 'flesh. Look 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


323 


at a map; look at Judea, occupying a central position 
among the nations of the earth, retaining to the last its 
adamantine belief in the One God in the rnidst of uni- 
versal paganism, and in close geographical connection 
with idolatrous Greece and Egypt, with Assyria and 
the other great empires of the gorgeous East, and with 
Home the mistress of the world. Look at Jerusalem, a 
great and rich city. Surely such a spot, on wliich shone 
the rejected light emanating from the most civilized 
parts of the earth, even admitting that it possessed none 
of its own, was not the locality where the most stupen- 
dous fraud which had ever been seen could have been 
successfully prepared and executed, particularly when 
you remember that the civilization I speak of, had, at 
that epoch, attained a degree of intellectual splendor 
which hardly pales before the civilization of modern 
times. There was not in Home and Jerusalem such an 
agglomeration of darkness and credulity, as to permit us 
to suppose that any man could have passed himself there 
for the God of the universe in the eye of an ‘ immense 
multitude.’ And yet, what did one day happen ? A 
Jew, about thirty years old, who had been known as a 
carpenter by trade, says to some of his fellow-citizens 
in humble life like himself : ^ I am the Christ you ex- 
pect : I am the only Son of God, I am God. Your 
father Abraham rejoiced to see my day ; before Abra- 
ham was, I am. He that will believe in me shall have 
eternal life.’ Was that man laughed at ? Was he lock- 
ed up as crazy and as too dangerous in his insanity to 
be permitted to roam at liberty ? 'No; and why ? Be- 
cause every one knew that he was not insane, but, on 
the contrary, that he was one gifted with the soundest 
and even the most luminous mind. 

“ In order to appreciate the miraculousness of what 


324 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


he has achieved, only suppose that one should suddenly 
say to an assembled multitude in this city : follow me, 
obey me, believe on me : I am the greatest and best of all 
men. Would not the multitude turn away from him 
in disgust % ^ Oh ! oh !’ would they not probably ex- 

claim : ‘ So you are the greatest and best of mankind, 
as you pretend. Yery well, prove it by your works.’ 
Who does not see that any one thus proclaiming him- 
self the first of his race, and claiming its allegiance by 
virtue thereof, would necessarily raise to himself almost 
insuperable difficulties in the way of whatever end he 
might aim at ? How much greater would his difficul- 
ties be, should he proclaim himself God Almighty, the 
Creator of the universe ! Such a thing had never been 
attempted beforO, nor has it since, because any one at- 
tempting it would inevitably and instantly be called, 
upon to make good his word. To assume publicly the 
obligation to perform the part of God, and be God the 
omnipotent, is something so stupendously bold that the 
imagination cannot realize it, and yet this is what Christ 
has done. And how did Christ act that part ? Look 
into the gospels, and you will see that the doctnne 
which he preached and which established what is called 
Christianity, is perfection itself and would produce it in 
all its effects, if strictly and faithfully complied with. 
This is the greatest of his miracles. Hence Christiani- 
ty cannot be of man who is imperfect, and if not of 
man, then it must be of God. To greedy and selfish 
men, such as they all are in general, whom Jesus met 
in the by-ways, on the high roads, on the sea shore, in 
the fields, or in the crowded lanes of cities, he said: 
‘Renounce your earthly goods, renounce all worldly 
pleasures and all that makes life desirable here, check 
your appetites and passions, sanctify your souls, mortify 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


325 


your flesh, follow me, be my disciples, be poor, beg for 
your daily bread, or work for it and nothing beyond. 
For so doing, you shall surely be vilified, and tortured 
and hated ; you shall be rewarded in heaven only, for 
my kingdom is not of this world.’ O wonder ! Tliey 
followed him on such conditions, lived as he prescribed, 
humble and abjectly poor, and proclaiming what he had 
told them to proclaim. They at last died martyrs of 
their faith, and frequently in the exquisite agonies of a 
lingering torture, rather than acknowledge that Jesus 
was not God. What a miracle ! Some who, very na- 
turally, doubted his word, for that word was passing 
strange, put to him this pertinent question : ‘ Thou 
sayest thou art the Son of God. Where is the proof 
of it V He might have been satisfied with the answer : 
‘ Do not the blind see, the deaf hear, and the paralytic 
walk V But he adds : ‘ I was born and I have lived 
amongst you, which of you has known me to commit a 
sin ?’ And this, indeed, was the strongest proof which 
he could give of His divinity. The skeptics were si- 
lenced, and some believed. But why should I go into 
the details of his life ? Bead the Gospels, I say ; read 
those records written by four different historians, sub- 
lime in their unity and similarity of description of a 
character so far above any human standard which ever 
was known before, or has been known since. Is that 
life, is that death, the life and death of a man ? The 
spontaneous answer in the negative must burst from the 
conscience of humanity, because it knows itself but too 
well. 

“ Was Christ a self-deceiver? Ho. He could not per- 
suade himself that he was God unless he was mad, and 
there is in him such external and internal evidence to the 
contrary, that none ever seriously brought such a charge 


326 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


against him. Wlas bean impostor? There may be a 
possibility or a feasibility of imposture in one who pre- 
tends to be a prophet, or the delegate of God, but, as I 
have already said, the assumption of divine omnipotence 
and perfection is an imposture which man cannot at- 
tempt. The mere shadow of God which he would 
profanely try to carry on his shoulders would be too 
much for him. Its weight would crush him instantly. 
But why an impostor ? What had he to gain by it ? 
What were the attractions of his self-imposed career ? 
Humiliation, poverty, the stone of the wayside for his 
pillow, the canopy of heaven for his sheltering roof, the 
sneers and gibes of enemies, the betrayal of friends, 
persecution, flagellation, the crown of thorns, crucifixion 
and an ignominious and cruel death. Besides, he had 
announced that his mission would be closed by that 
death, that he would resuscitate, that he- would appear 
to his disciples, and before them be glorified and ascend 
to heaven. Why assume these impossibilities, if he 
was not God? Was he not giving those he had de- 
ceived sure means and opportunities to be undeceived ? 
Oil ! But he did not, of course, accomplish these things ; 
the programme failed, and his disciples testified to what 
had never happened, in order to gratify the pride of fanat- 
ical obstinacy and establish the divinity of their leader. 
But to what purpose ? and what interest had they in so 
doing ? What did they make by it, except as St. Paul 
said: Go be in prison, lacerated with stripes above 
measure, beaten with rods and stoned, and to be often 
in journey ings, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, 
in perils of their own countrymen, in perils by the 
heathens, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilder- 
ness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, 
ill weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


327 


hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and naked- 
ness.’ This is what the disciples of Christ gained by 
preaching his doctrine and atfirming his divinity. * 

I liave brought before you the spiritual pre-existence 
and the bodily existence of Christ. In both is the God- 
head visible. Does not Christ still survive on earth 
where he once lived ? Is he not still the bread of life, 
as he proclaimed himself to be near two thousand years 
ago ? According to all present appearances and ac- 
cording to aU probabilities, if we look into the past and 
into the future, must we not come to the conclusion 
that he spoke the truth, when he said : ^ The heaven 
and the earth shall pass, but my word shall never pass.’ 
What philosopher ever had the audacity to proclaim 
the eternal duration of his doctrine and of the school 
which he had founded? Hone. What legislator has 
ventured to declare the endless immutability of his laws 
in this ever-changing world ? Hone. Every one knows 
that Time would have replied to the boldness of such 
asseverations : ‘ Thou liest, puny man,’ and would have 
proved the lie by one stroke of his scythe. What con- 
queror, what founder of an empire ever dared to say to 
his lieutenants assembled near his death-bed, at that 
solemn hour when he felt the sceptre escaping from his 
grasp and the crown dropping from his head : ^ Be of 
good cheer, I have overcome the world. Ho power on 
earth, not even the gates of hell shall prevail against 
you and against what I have done ?’ If Alexander, if 
Cyrus, if Caesar, Charlemagne, Tamerlane, or Hapoleon, 
had indulged in the temerity of uttering such a declar- 
ation, how ludicrously presumptuous it would appear, 
when we see recorded in history what happened after 
them. Christ alone could say to his apostles when pre- 
paring himself for the gibbet of Calvary : ^ Be of good 


328 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


cheer. I have overcome the world.’ And have not 
their successors ample reason to he of good cheer? Is 
not Christ still triumphant, and even more triumphant 
than ever, after a long lapse of ages? Does not Chris- 
tianity, after eighteen centuries, continue to be the 
head and heart of civilization, and what would become 
of that civilization, if Christianity, folding under its 
aiTQ the Bible and the Gospel, departed from among us 
never to return? Would it not be as when the soul de- 
parts from the body ? Would not society be a putrefied, 
worm-engendering corpse ? 

If there is any thing to which man is attached, it is 
the absolute and complete right of thinking as he 
pleases, and of being without restraint the lord of his 
own intellect, and an anointed monarch holding undis- 
puted s-way over himself. In the defence of that 
privilege so dear to his very nature, he has always re- 
sisted the tyranny of power on the throne, the dictation 
of theology in the temple, and of science in the schools, 
and yet Christ says to him : ‘ I am the light, and the 
truth and the way.’ He commands us to abdicate the 
royalty of our mind, to lay aside the sceptre of our will, 
to become the vassals of his own mind and the tools of 
bis own will, and during eighteen centuries millions 
have obeyed and still obey that injunction ! To none 
but God could such a sacrifice be made. Hone but 
God could have exacted such self-immolation and 
worked the miracle of obtaining it. He who died as 
man, in such hearts still survives as God. Throughout 
the world, millions to this day kneel to him in complete 
intellectual servitude, and exclaim : ‘ Thou art the light, 
the truth and the way.’ 

You who listen to me, denizens of the tomb, did 
you ever, when in the flesh, dream of loving and being 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


329 


loved ? How many of you did succeed in that aspira- 
tion? How sad would be the tale of your affections. 
How long did they last ? How long did you love ? 
How long were you loved? To what degree? With 
what disinterestedness ? How many times did you de- 
ceive, or were deceived? How often were love and 
friendship but thorns in your bleeding hearts ? And 
of love, that coveted prize in the lottery of life, if you 
were so fortunate as to obtain a large share, how much 
remained of it after your death ? Grant that a 
prayer is still said in your behalf, grant that flowers 
occasionally decorate your tomb, grant that your name 
still escapes from the lips of pious sorrow. Soon time 
effaces you from the memory of a once bereaved, but 
now consoled mourner, and sends also to the grave the 
few who may have retained a lingering remeuabrance 
of you. Yet a little while, and no longer comes to you 
that ethereal breath of love which is so I'efreshing to the 
soul ; yet a little while, and you are as if you had never 
existed. 

But there is one man, on whose tomb still sits the 
same love which wept at the foot of the cross of Calva- 
ry, the same love which the frost of eighteen centuries 
has not made cold, and which, gifted with eternal 
youth, is self-reproducing, and is as pure, and as intense 
as on the day it sprang into existence. There is one man 
whose bloody feet are daily kissed by thousands of men, 
women, and children, who kneel before his sacred effi- 
gy. There is one man whose gibbet is still glorified. 
There is one flagellated and crucified convict, before 
whose image, love on its knees and prostrated in the 
dust, is intensified into ecstasy and sees him sitting on 
the right hand of God. That convict is Christ, and 
were he not God, he could not have operated such a 


330 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


miracle. Who among the sons of men is loved fifty 
years after his death ? Which of them among the most 
illustrious in war, in science, in the arts, and in litera- 
ture ? JSTame one. Do I hear one of you, spirits, say : 
Mahomet? But Mahomet is venerated by the Moslem, 
and not loved. ‘God is great, and Mahomet is his 
prophet/ he exclaims. But when did the followers 
of the camel driver of Mecca give proof of such inef- 
fable love for him as the Christian gives to Jesus? And 
not only has Jesus done this for himself, but he has also 
granted to his apostles and to his saints the privilege 
of inspiring through him eternal love and veneration 
for themselves. He who is still loved, and who still 
lives after centuries of death, was not and is not a man, 
but is God. 

“ If tp be thus loved is miraculous, wdiat shall I say 
of being worshiped? It is something still more mi- 
raculous ; it is the miracle of miracles. The pride of 
man is such, that there is nothing which he would cov- 
et more ardently than the felicity of being worshiped. 
To this, the strongest of human passions, is due the un- 
extinguishable thirst for power which characterizes him 
— particularly that kind of power 'which makes mortal 
man bend the knee in abject humiliation before his fel- 
low-worm. But, on the other hand, and perhaps in 
consequence of our intense desire of being worshiped 
ourselves, there is nothing which we hat6 so much as to 
be compelled to worship one of our race. When thus 
prostrating ourselves before the idol at whose disposal 
are our honor, our fortune, and our life, we concentrate 
within ourselves our secret indignation and lasting pro- 
test. We watch keenly for the day of vreakness which 
inevitably follows the day of strength, when our master 
towered over us with lofty insolence. Woe to the vile 


FERNANDO DE DEMOS. 


331 


creature wlio, aping tlie Deity, has forced mankind to 
burn incense bet’ore liis nostrils ! The hour of retalia- 
tion will come, and the offending reptile will be bruised 
under the heels df an avenging Nemesis, and, if it be 
true that there is but one step from the capitol to the 
Tarpeian rock, it is na less true that there is also but 
one step from the altar to the sewers of the street. 
Were it possible for a man to cause himself to be wor- 
shiped like a God, we know that, on one day, or on the 
other, he would be pulled down by the hands of his 
worshipers from the usurped Olympus of his divinity, 
that he would be dragged with a rope round his neck 
through mud and mire, and be nailed to the pillory of 
eternal opprobrium. Such is the invariable teaching 
of those annals of the human race in which the pen of 
the historian has been providentially destined to regis- 
ter the judgment of God against the pride of man. 
There is but one exception to that universal rule, and 
that exception is Jesus. He was worshiped during 
life, and has never ceased to be worshiped after death. 
Seated on the stool of ignominy and not on the car of 
triumph, he has conquered with the weapons of hu- 
mility and self-sacrifice the tribute of an adoration 
which is paid to him to this day, and which can plead 
at the bar of the world a prescription of eighteen hun- 
dred years. Temples after temples, statues after statues, 
have been erected to the rulers of the earth. Where 
are those statues, where are those temples ? Can your 
finger point out a corner of the earth, where the eye 
can discover a living remnant of that populace of gods 
created by flattery ? Temples, gods, and statues have 
long since crumbled into dust, and even that dust has 
been swept away. Jesus alone stands erect on his ever- 
increasing altars, not in an obscure nook of the earth. 


332 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


but over its broad surface, among barbarians, and 
among those nations most renowned for their luxurious 
and skeptic civilization. The prolific vitality of the 
love of which he is the object knows no bounds. Ar- 
chitecture, poetry, music, painting, sculpture, have ex- 
hausted themselves and accomplished prodigies in sup- 
port and in manifestation of that adoration which grows 
and expands wdth time. He has not triumphed alone ; 
His apostles and his disciples have shared in his glori- 
fication, and are still loved and venerated for his sake. 
What king, what conqueror, what master of the world 
ever did the like for himself and for his lieutenants ? 
If this is without a precedent, if this cannot have been 
the work of man, he who achieved it is none, but is God. 

“ What makes his triumph more strikingly marvelous 
is, that the children of the earth, the Titans of infi- 
delity, have never ceased to strike at him and his al- 
tars, each with his one hundred arms, but the impotent 
malignity of their attack has only demonstrated his eter- 
nal and invincible strength. Out of the clouds and 
dust of every contest he has come out with greater 
splendor. Genius has protected him against genius, 
science against science, philosophy against philosophy, 
the sword against the sword, and the eloquence of logic 
against the eloquence of sophistry. He has gathered 
unto himself and forged into a shield aU the weapons 
which were leveled at him, and whenever, during the 
darkness which had overspread the battle field, he was 
thought to be at last prostrate on the ground never to 
rise again, returning light showed him standing victo- 
rious, calm, serene, the ever-adored Lord of the innu- 
merable hosts of the faithful, to whom he had said 
when few in numbers and sorrowful : ‘ Be of good 

cheer, I have overcome the world.’ 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


333 


“ Did ever man frame any institution, or any system, 
or any laws or doctrines so perfect, that they were not 
susceptible of improvements and presented this singular 
phenomenon : that it could not be within the jpower of 
human ingenuity to find their substitute, or equivalent, 
or any thing approaching to their excellence ? And 
yet this is the ease with Christianity, which extorts this 
confession of its perfection even from its most violent 
enemies — a confession showing the strange insanity of 
the war waged against it. Christianity is of a triple 
essence made up of humility, charity and fi’aternity. 
Hence it is the only religion which is capable of encir- 
cling the whole of mankind within its embrace. It is 
not confined to any locality, or to any mode of govern- 
ment. There is no country which would not become 
an Eden, if thoroughly christianized in theory and 
in practice, instead of being a mere semblance and 
counterfeit, and assuming a name to which it is not en- 
titled. There is no government, be it monarchical, 
aristocratic, or democratic, which would not answer the 
pui^poses and expectations of man, if its veins were 
injected with the pure unadulterated blood of Christi- 
anity. Universal cliarity and fraternity are fine things 
to talk about, but they do not exist without humility, 
and where is humility to be found outside of Christi- 
anity ? Charity, fraternity and equality are the eternal 
themes of revolutionists and reformers, who declaim 
against the ignorance and prejudices of the past, the 
absurdities and abuses of the present, and who distrib- 
ute with profusion, on handsomely ornamented cards, 
their bewitching promises of a golden future, to all 
those who will follow in their footsteps, to be conducted 
by them to the distant land where the expected millen- 
nium awaits them, whilst in the meantime they realize 


334 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


it for tliemselves, and for the saints manufactured after 
their own fashion, amidst the wild orgies of unre- 
strained lust and plunder. O charlatans drunk with 
pride ! Where, outside of Christianity, do you discover 
charity, fraternity and humility erected into a doctrine ? 
L do not say equality, for it is not in the Gospel, but an 
invention of the devil, the father of all lies ; and, 
wherever preached and adopted as the equivalent or 
synonym of fraternity, it will work satanical mischief 
and perturbation. Do you discover the doctrine of 
humility, charity and fraternity in the mythological 
religions of Egypt, Greece and Rome, in the Druidism 
of the Gauls, or in the wild Scandinavian creeds ? Is 
there a particle of this glorious trinity in the Buddhism, 
Brahminism, fetichism and other idolatries of India and 
Africa, or in any of the crude and savage worships of 
the American Indians ? Is there any of it in Mahom- 
etanism, that uncouth plagiarism of the Bible and Gos- 
pel, or even in the temporary dispensation of Judaism ? 
ETo. It is a doctrine peculiar to Jesus and to Jesus 
alone. It is repugnant and abhorrent to the pride of 
man, and therefore if Jesus had partaken only of hu- 
man nature without any of the divine in him, such 
would not have been the doctrine which he would have 
established, and such would not have been its duration 
and its capacity of universal expansion. A doctrine ! 
Ah ! My brethren of the world of spirits, have you 
any idea of the difficulty of creating a doctrine and of 
procuring its absolute, undisputed adoption by even a 
few disciples within a restricted locality ? What shall 
I say of a doctrine which is to extend to the confines 
of the earth, which is never to pass away, and which, 
like the high and lofty One, ‘ inhabiteth eternity V 
Before Christianity, was there any doctrine, either of 


FERNA.VDO DE LEMOS. 


335 


religion, or of morality, which aspired to universality ? 
Was there any doctrine at all in the religions of antiq- 
uity ? Was there any thing else in them than gorgeous 
ceremonies ? Is there any doctrine in the still existing 
religions of Buddhism and Brahminism \ What sort of' 
a doctrine is that which squats inert and un progressive 
in the cradle where it was horn, and which disdains 
that proselytism which is the characteristic of trutli ? 
What is the doctrine of the Koran beyond what is bor- 
rowed from the Bible and mixed up with error and 
imposture ? ‘ There is but one God. God is great, 
and Mahomet is his prophet.’ That is all. And how 
was that doctrine, simple as it is, to be propagated ? 
Listen : ‘ Go and subjugate the world,’ said Mahomet 
to his followers. Why ? Because Mahomet was not 
‘ the light, the truth and the way.’ Hence the sword 
was to be his apostle and missionary. What was the 
command of Christ ? ‘ Go and convert all the nations, 

of the earth.’ How ? Merely with the Word^ merely 
with the force of persuasion. Such is the difference 
between the mai*ch of truth and that of error. 

“ Neither Socrates, nor Plato, would ever have been 
able, nor will any other philosopher ever be able, to 
create and establish a doctrinal system like Christianity. 
There ar^ two reasons for it : first, because such perfec- 
tion is beyond the reach of man, and next, because 
philosophy proclaims that man ought not to subject and 
enslave his own judgment to the judgment of another, 
for any one man is as good as any other, and ought to 
hold in his estimation nothing more precious than the 
independence of his own mind. Then philosophy, or 
science, also maintains that man ought not to believe in 
any word purporting to come from God, because it is 
philosophically or scientifically demonstrated that God 


336 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


iieverspeaks to man. But if man must not believe either 
in God, or in man, what will he believe in ? Philoso- 
phy answers : he must believe in himself and in noth^ 
ing else. Then every one must be his owm teacher, 
or at liberty to dissent from the one he may have 
chosen, or who may have been imposed on him. But 
is it not clear that, where one believes only in one’s 
self, there can not be disciples, of course ? Where there 
are no disciples, there is no master or teacher. Where 
there is no master, there are no acquiescence or assent, 
and no unity. Where there are no acquiescence, or as- 
sent, and no nnity, there can be no doctrine. Hence, 
outside of Christianity, there can be nothing but incred- 
ulity, because there is no authority to teach, and no 
right to command obedience. Its authority is derived 
from its celestial origin, and it is the only religion which 
has proof of such an origin. Incredulity is powerless to 
build anything, and, whenever incredulity gives up its 
attempted work in despair of finishing it, there is noth- 
ing on which it can fall back, except it be Christianity. 
Therefore Christianity cannot be modified, or replaced. 
It is perfect and eternal, it meets all the wants of man ; 
it contains principles and doctrines so mathematically 
true, that tliey must prevail forever, not only on this 
earth, but also in those innumerable spheres which are 
probably inhabited by intelligent beings, and which 
appear to us like a golden dust scattered over the infi- 
niteness of space. What conclusion must we come to, 
brethren of the grave? It is that Christianity is of 
God, and that Christ is God.” * 

At this moment, the shrill crowing of a cock was 
heard. Tintin Calandro stopped abruptly. The cock 

* Some of the theological views expressed in these pages have been 
borrowed from Lacordaire. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 337 

crew again. Tintin -looked round as if seeking for the 
intruding bird and seemed strangely agitated. I soon 
saw that the wild light of insanity flashed from his eyes. 
He passed his hand over his forehead repeatedly, as if 
endeavoring to recall departing reason. He shook dis- 
consolately his long gray hair which streamed down 
over his shoulders. The cock crew a third time. 
‘‘ Thus didst thou crow,” he shouted, when Peter de- 
nied his divine Master, and thus has the world ever 
crowed over every act of successful treachery — over 
every cowardly but money-making retreat from the 
exposed position of perilous duty — over the triumph of 
purple-clad vice sneering at virtue in rags — over the 
trampling down of every thing that is noble, beautiful 
and refined under the iron foot of senseless pride, vin- 
dictive jealousy and brutish force. Thus crew the 
world when the sons of illustrious Jinights, whose name 
sounded like the valor-inspiring blast of the clarion, 
were driven into exile from their ancestral and time- 
honored roofs by the multitudinous viper brood of re- 
bellious scullions and footmen, when the worshipers of 
the goddess of reason slaughtered the ministers of the 
true God and blasphemed thy name, O Christ ! Thus 
crew the world, when the descendant of St. Louis and 
the heir of a hundred kings, died on a scaflbld like a 
common malefactor, and when the martyred daughter 
of the Caesars met with the same fate. Thus I heard 
the chanticleer of hell crow, when the gory head of the 
fairest, noblest, purest daughter of France, whom the 
angels themselves must have loved, was carried on a 
pike by the hand of a woman amidst a crowd of exult- 
ing fiends. Thus it crew, when that sight sent me a 
howling maniac through the streets of the modern 
Babylon, and has ever since made me the fit companion 
15 


338 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


of the dead. But if the world crows, I will crow too, 
for I belong to him who said : ‘ Be of good cheer ; I 
have overcome the world.’ ” 

Here Tintin began to imitate with frantic energy 
the shrill notes of the harbinger of day. I rushed to 
him and lifted him from the tomb on which he stood. 

I pressed the poor maniac to my breast, and kissed his 
brow. It was hot and feverish. “ My friend,” I said, 
you are ill. Take my arm, and let us go home.” He 
complied with my request mechanically, for I am con- 
vinced that he had ceased to be conscious of my pres- 
ence. When we reached his house, we found the faith- 
ful Zabet already at her post, for day was beginning to 
break. She crossed herself on seeing the condition in 
which he was. “ Bless me !” she exclaimed. “ One of 
his fits is on him. O Jesus, how long will it last ?” She 
took charge of the old man, and we put him to bed like 
a child. I left him in the hands of his kind nurse, and 
went home, musing on the strange Christmas night which 
I had passed. I was worn out with fatigue and emo- 
tion, and I tried to rest. I fell asleep, but the most fan- 
tastic and tormenting dreams crowded upon me. At 
one time, for instance, I fancied that the overseer of my 
plantation had turned out to be Bobespierre in person, 
whom, to my horror, I surprised boiling a negro in one 
of my sugar kettles in the name of equality, liberty • 
and universal fraternity. 


CHAPTEE XXYm. 


DOMINIQUE YOU, THE PIRATE. 

Notwithstandino the careful and aifectionate atten- 
dance of Zabet and of myself during a week, Tintin 
Calandro did not appear to grow better, so that I*deter- 
mined to have recourse to one of my medical friends, 
with whom I was on a footing of great intimacy, and 
in whose talents and experience I had the most implicit 
confidence. Tintin had become very feeble, and was 
thinner and paler, if possible. He was consumed by 
a slow fever, and, at a certain hour of the night, was 
liable periodically to a sort of nervous fits, which w^ere 
followed by a lethargy out of which it was difficult to 
rouse him. Doctor Rhineberg was unremitting in his 
attentions. IJ nder the influence of his skillful treatment, 
I had the satisfaction of seeing Tintin gradually return- 
ing to such health as he usually possessed, and this is 
not saying much. Once, however, he had a relapse. I 
sent for the doctor, who promised to come at ten o’clock 
at night, when a crisis was expected in the patient. But 
he made his appearance much later. ‘‘ Don’t blame me,” 
he hastened to say as he entered. I am exhausted ; 
1 have been several hours at the side of a dying and 
now dead man, and I need some rest.” Thus speaking, 
he threw himself on the old rickety sofa which cracked 

( 339 ) 


340 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


and seemed ready to break nnder his weight, and with 
a yawn, he inquired how his patient was. 

‘‘ In a profound sleep, or rather in one of his habitual 
fits of lethargy,’’ I replied. 

‘‘Well, let him sleep,” said the doctor. “His state 
of lethargy is due to general debility. The poor fellow 
is worn out. He may rally to some extent from his 
present prostration, and we may send him back alive to 
his paradise of a cemetery. But it will not be for long. 
Thus passeth away the glory of this world.” 

Having uttered this trite sentence, the doctor stretch- 
ed himself at full length, and fell into a snoring slumber. 
In half an hour he woke up. “ Faith !” he said, “ I 
stood in want of some refreshment. The dying man 
whom I have already mentioned clung to my skirts and 
chose to take me for his confessor. A strange wFim, is 
it not ? He also instituted me his universal legatee, 
whereby I am now in possession of this trinket,” and 
the doctor exhibited a small dagger, which he handed 
over to me for examination. The blade was four inches 
long, thick, broad, and terminating in a very sharp 
point ; it was exactly in the shape of the head of a 
lance, and its two edges were as thin and keen as that 
of a razor. On the blade were engraved these words 
in Spanish : Quien a mi amo offenders^ de mi la venganza 
esj)ere, “ Who offends my master, in me meets the 
avenger.” This sentence was repeated on the massive 
silver sheath. The handle was of carved ebony, and 
its upper end represented the grinning head of a tur- 
baned negro. 

“ Look at it well,” said my friend, “ for this little 
weapon drank the life blood of a stout heart — the heart 
of Lafitte.” 

“ Lafitte !” I exclaimed. “ Which Lafitte ?” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


341 


“Lafitte of Barataria,” he replied, “Lafitte the 
smuggler, the outlaw, the pirate, at least by reputation 
— Lafitte the companion in arms of General Jackson in 
the defence of New Orleans — ^he who refused the tempt- 
ing bribes of the English to help them in the invasion 
of Louisiana — he wdio with his dare-devil men perform- 
ed so conspicuous a part in the battle of the eighth of Jan- 
uary.” 

“Hasten to tell me the story,” I said. “My curios- 
ity is intensely excited, and I. am all ears.” 

“ Two weeks ago,” resumed the doctor, “ I was called 
upon to visit a sick man in St. Philip street. No. 117. 
Dominique You was his name. Wrapped up in a 
morning-gown, he was reclining in a large arm-chair 
with his slippered feet resting on a stool covered with a 
tigei’^s skin. The monstrous head of the animal, exhib- 
iting a terrific row of teeth and glaring with ferocious 
eyes, was remarkably preserved and made to retain all 
the appearance of life. My new patient had been original- 
ly a man of powerful make, but he now was attenuated 
and feeble. He was evidently a stranger, and occupied 
a room in one of those furnished houses which are kept 
for the accommodation of the public, and which are so 
numerous in this city. His physiognomy was remark- 
able and not easily to be forgotten. It was massive 
and of the Leonine style. It looked as if the monarch 
of the forest had assumed the human form, but still re- 
tained something of his primitive type. A thick bushy 
hair, falling like a shaggy mane over his shoulders, 
added to the effect. His voice was deep toned and 
sounded like a subdued roar, as it came out of the large 
cavities of his broad chest. He invited me take a seat 
by his side. 

“ ‘ I am recently from South America,’ he said, ‘ and 


342 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS 


I was on my way to France, wlien my health, which 
had become very bad for some time past, failed me en- 
tirely here. I am completely conquered by my implac- 
able disease, and I pull down my flag to it at last. I 
consult you, not with the expectation of being saved, 
for I suspect that this is the beginning of the end, but 
because I have some reasons of my own to know pre- 
cisely how long I am to linger. Remember that I want 
no childish concealment. The truth must be told me 
plainly. Is that agreed to V 

“ I nodded assent, and, after a thorough examination 
of the part wher-e the disease was, I said to him : ‘You 
are suffering from an ossification of one of the valves of 
the heart.’ 

“ He looked at me with a calm but searching eye, 
and merely said in an interrogating tone : ‘ Mortal V 
“ ‘ Mortal,’ I replied. ‘ There remains nothing to do 
but to try to alleviate your sufferings.’ 

“ He remained unmoved under this sentence of death. 
Wrapped up in thought for a little while, he seemed to 
forget my presence. But, returning to the object of 
my visit, he said : ‘ How many days have I to live V 
“‘Yery few.’ 

“ ‘ Thank you, doctor, for your frankness. How I 
have a favor to ask. Will you come and stay with me 
half an hour every day ? I need a little company and 
do not desire to die as if abandoned by the whole crea- 
tion. I will remunerate you largely.’ 

“ I promised to comply with his wishes, and, true to 
my word, I visited him every day with increasing in- 
terest, I must confess, because there was in the fortitude 
with which he bore his sufferings a sort of majesty 
which won my admiration. I believe that he became 
aware of it, for ere long he seemed to warm up to me. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


343 


One day he said : ‘ Doctor, do you believe in God, in 
the soul and in its immortality?’ I answered in the 
affirmative. 

“ ‘ You are not then,’ he said, ^ a materialist like al- 
most all the members of your profession ?’ 

“ ^ Certainly not.’ 

“‘Well, your belief is mine. So far, so good; and 
now, pray, tell me if you think that one having such a 
belief is necessarily susceptible of remorse for having 
committed what is generally understood to be a crime ? ’ 

“ ‘ ^Necessarily, no ; probably, yes.’ 

“ ‘ What is a crime, doctor V 

“ ‘ Any wicked or atrocious act, I suppose, which is 
a grave violation of a human or a divine law.’ 

“ ‘ Setting aside divine law,’ he said, ‘ for I always 
give a wide birth to religious discussions, I am then a 
criminal, according to your definition, for I certainly 
have violated human laws even to the shedding of 
blood, and yet, although I believe in God and in the 
immortality of the soul, I have no remorse. I assure 
you that I am as calm and easy as if I did not stand 
guilty in the sight of man.’ 

“ ‘ Surely,’ said I, ‘ your own conscience must tell you 
that you are under the obligation of obeying the laws 
of the civilized society of which you are a member, be- 
cause if society was not entitled to have its laws en- 
forced, good or bad as they may be, it could not exist, 
and man would return to his original isolation and 
helplessness in his primitive state of nature.’ 

“ ‘ Bah ! Doctor ; what is conscience but the acciden- 
tal result of education ? Conscience is an elastic word 
which may be stretched to meaning this or that. What 
is against the conscience of one man, is not against the 
conscience of another. Some call it an interior light. 


344 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


Wliat sort of interior light is it ? A very dim one, I am 
afraid, if it exists at ah. Catch a man in a forest and in 
that state of nature you allude to, what interior light 
will there be in him ? Should he be very liungiy, and 
should he meet another biped of his own species de- 
vouring a deer or some other animal, would he not help 
himself to a slice, or to the whole of it, without asking 
leave ? And if he encountered resistance, would he 
not knock on the liead, if he could, the successful hun- 
ter, and perhaps eat him too? What interior light 
would tell him that he is wrong? I have read some- 
where that conscience is the testimony of the heart 
given befoi;e the tribunal of reason. Pshaw ! This is 
copper-spangled stiiif — there is no gold in it — only a 
glittering definition — but as empty as a drum. Is con- 
science the voice of God, secretly whispering to us 
within the dark chambers of our passions and appe- 
tites ? This is metaphysical nonsense and nothing else. 
No, sir; conscience, after all, can only be that judg- 
ment which we pass in our own mind over our actions ; 
and is not that judgment the result of education, and, 
if education, in its turn, is the result of an infinite 
variety of accidental circumstances, how diversified and 
unreliable must that judgment be which we call con- 
science !’ 

‘‘ ‘ The susceptibility,’ I replied, ‘ of being educated 
into that intellectuality which man has attained and 
which he may carry still further, constitutes his gran- 
deur, and his superiority over the rest of animals. In 
all ages, m every country possessing the slightest en- 
lightenment, under whatever form of government, un- 
der whatever systems of laws, under whatever relig- 
ious creeds, and whatever are the difierences of race, 
the people have, as it were spontaneously and instinc- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


345 


tively, agreed as. to the recognition rather than the 
establishment of certain moral laws which they deem a 
crime to violate. The universal concurrence of the 
civilized, portion of mankind in the adoption of those 
moral precepts and laws, demonstrates that the capacity 
of appreciating them is a component part of our organ- 
ism, in which it lies dormant until developed into 
gradual expansion in due time, and according to the 
designs of Providence. It is in this sense that con- 
science may he called the voice of God. That voice 
may be more or less imperfectly heard, in proportion 
to the less or more correct education one has had the 
good fortune to receive in conformity with those moral 
laws of which I have spoken ; but, when that voice is 
heard at all, however indistinctly, it is the duty of every 
one to lend to it an attentive ear, and to obey it so far 
as comprehended. He who should disregard it, would 
be guilty in the eye of God and man. But allow me 
to bring to a close our philosophical discussion. My 
other patients await me. I must leave you for the 
present to your meditations, which may perhaps oper- 
ate a beneficial change in the state of your mind, and 
make you look with hope and pleasure to that future 
existence in which you have expressed belief. In the 
meantime, I will prescribe an anodyne which I recom- 
mend you to take before going to bed.’ 

On my next visit, after having examined his condi- 
tion, which I found to be worse, I seated myself near 
him to keep him company, as he had begged me to do, 
during as much time as I could spare. He looked at 
me uneasily, I thought, and with some hesitation and 
awkwardness of manner he said : ‘ Doctor, how do you 
account for that extraordinary impulse which sometimes 
constrains a man to make confessions injurious to liis 
15 * 


346 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


reputatioD, and often imperilling his life? How comes 
he to speak, when he has such powerful reasons to keep 
his own secrets ?’ 

^ I have reflected very little on the subject/ I re- 
plied. ‘ I presume, however, that sometimes men act 
as you say, under the pressure of a feeling of remorse 
which they are unwilling to acknowledge to themselves, 
and which seeks relief in confession and atonement, 
although, and perhaps because, it may lead to the scaf- 
fold. It is probable that frequently it originates in 
that impatience of solitude which is innate in man, who 
is evidently born for sociality. A solitude of thought ! 
A solitude of feeling ! It may become at times so op- 
pressive that it cannot he endured. The long pent-up 
agony of the soul in the barren desert which sin has 
made around it, seeks the companionship of sympathy, 
of pity, even of reproof or contempt, rather than ac- 
cept the horrors of the frozen loneliness to which it 
finds itself condemned. But why such a question V 
‘ Because I feel agrowing and unaccountable tempta- 
tion to give you a sketch of my life.’ 

^ You had better not. It might agitate you to look 
into the past, and you need the utmost quietude. Be- 
sides, what good could it do you V 

‘ It would he the gratification of an almost irre- 
sistible impulse, and, as my life is ebbing fast away, any 
gi'atification which I may procure is not to be disdained.’ 

“ ‘ Hying men,’ I remarked, ‘ when they are con- 
scious that their last hour approaches, frequently have 
confessions to make which will be fit only for the ears 
of a priest. Shall I send for one V 

‘ Ho, no,’ he said in a rather excited tone, ‘ no 
priest for me. The ghostly mountebank, because of his 
shaven crown, would expect me to ask forgiveness at 


FERNANDO DE LEA/OS. 


347 


his hands, and I have none to ask, although you see in 
me an outlaw and the perpetrator of many bloody 
deeds, one whom the sword of human justice, if invoked 
by you, would soon put out of this world, were it not 
that he is already in the gripe of death. I have a 
strange desire to unbosom myself to you, and to nobody 
else. If caprice, it is the caprice of a dying man, and 
as such is entitled to kind consideration. I shall not 
trespass beyond the limits of that time which you 
usually allow me, and for which I am sinaerely grateful.’ 

With a gesture of resignation to his will, I dropped 
into the arm-chair which had become to me a familiar 
seat, and I prepared myself to listen. He continued in 
these words : ” 

‘“I was born in Bayonne, France, of respectable 
parentage, that is to say, in the estimation of the world, 
whatever it might be in reality. When in the cradle, I 
was nearly killed by a rooster which attacked me 
furiously. When I was six or seven years old, it seem- 
ed to me that every human being, young and old, male 
and female, was disposed to continue against me the 
war first begun by the rooster. My father and mother 
incessantly quarreled with each other, and their ill 
humor expressed itself in kicks and cuffs to my address, 
which were perhaps parentally intended for my physi- 
cal improvement by hardening my body. On my going 
to school, all the boys entered into a coalition against 
me. They conspired together against my peace of 
mind and my bodily comfort, day and night. Each one 
of them ernulonsly strove to surpass his juvenile allies 
in the perpetration of tricks and pranks upon me. A.s I 
was not of a very enduring temper, I fought them with 
obstinacy, and I was regularly punished by the usher 
who acted the part of police officer over us, for having 


348 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


been tbe aggressor, when I was tlie aggressed. I dis- 
tinguished myself in my studies, and invariably, every 
year, I carried away the prizes in every one of the 
classes to which I belonged. Yet I received but cold 
commendation from my teachers, who seemed eager to 
console my class-mates for their inferiority. When, on 
vacation-day, I went home loaded with honors and with 
the consciousness that I deserved a family ovation, I 
was received with indifference, whilst my brother, who 
was a dunce, was welcomed with enthusiastic affection. 
The public journals contained ffattering biographical 
notices of all those pupils who obtained prizes. In re- 
lation to me they were always silent. It is true my 
name was mentioned, but it was a mere item in the list 
of the successful contenders. My parents died when I 
was still a minor, and one of my uncles became my 
tutor. He cheated me out of a considerable portion 
of my inheritance, and so played his cards that he 
largely increased at my expense the share of my brother, 
who subsequently became the husband of his daughter. 
On reaching my majority, and on my going to Paris, I 
married into the family of a merchant of St. Denis 
street, and became his partner. My wife committed 
adultery with one whom I considered my most intimate 
friend, and my father-in-law swindled me out of all my 
property. That intimate friend was not satisfied with 
robbing me of my wife. Having perpetrated forgery, 
he fastened it on me, and he had the art, on mj’^ trial, to 
convince the court by the most skillfully arranged cir- 
cumstantial evidence, corroborated by his own direct 
testimony against me, that I was guilty of what he had 
done, and I was sentenced to hard labor for ten years. 
I was then twenty-five. At the expiration of several 
weary long years, I managed to escape. You may 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


349 


easily imagine that, whilst in durance vile as a felon, I 
had possessed sufficient opportunity and leisure to pon- 
der over human life as arranged for us by the Creator, 
and to analyze minutely all that had happened to me in 
particular since my infancy. I came to the conclusion, 
after much reflection, and after a scrutinizing review' of 
all I had Experienced, as well as read and been told of, 
that life, in and out of society, either in a state of civ- 
ilization, or in a state of nature, is war, open or clandes- 
tine, but certainly war, war with a smile or war with 
a frown, war with the sword or war with the pen, war 
under the peaceful garb of the civilian as well as under 
the cuirass of the soldier, strategy in the tented fleld 
and strategy in the gilded saloon, stratagems, false as- 
surances, invasions of time-honored rights, diplomatic 
lies in the line of business, plunder open or concealed, 
cheatings under the mask of honesty, invidious stabs in 
the back, sweetened poison tendered to the lips of the 
unguarded, sly homicides in a thousand gentle ways — • 
in substance and to sum up : a perpetual struggle in ev- 
ery family, and between man and man wherever they 
meet — the strong living at the expense of the weak in 
the inflnite chain of created beings — among the human 
race — among the animals, the birds, the fishes, and the 
insects — the elements themselves being in irreconcilable 
conflict — nay the whole of nature convulsed with in- 
testine war. So far as I was concerned, society had be- 
gun the hostilities under which I had suffered so long 
without retaliation. I swore at last that I would better 
the instruction received, and, in my turn, wage war with 
a vengeance. 

“As soon as I had set myself free, I inquired about 
my bosom friend, who, it must be admitted, was largely 
in my debt. I learned that he had purchased a beau- 


350 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


tiful country seat distant eighty miles from Paris. One 
morning, there was a great commotion in that chateau 
and for many miles round. The Don Juan and his 
paramour, my former wife, had been found stabbed to 
the heart in their adulterous bed, with this inscription 
on the wall of their chamber: ‘Wonder not ; they 
have reaped what they deserved; justice^is done.’ 
J^eed I say whose deed it was? Was this a crime, doc- 
tor ? no, sir, it was war, just war in a good cause. It 
was taking by surprise the castle of the enemy, and put- 
ting the garrison to the sword. This was legitimate, and 
strictly according to the rules of war, a war which they 
had begun. Shortly after this event, my foot was on the 
deck of a vessel bound to New Orleans. I had heard 
of Lafitte and of his settlement at Barataria with his bold 
band of freebooters. He also was of Bayonne, and I 
had known him at school. I remembered him as a mild 
and inoffensive boy. I concluded that, if common re- 
port did not belie him, he had greatly changed since he 
had grown into manhood. I met him again in his 
stronghold and he gave me a hearty welcome. My real 
name is Paymond. I assumed then the name under 
which I am now known: Dominique You. I had 
brought with me fifty desperadoes. On this my first 
interview with Lafitte, I said to him : 

“ ‘ I come not here to join your troop and to be un- 
der your command, but to be your ally and friend, if 
you have no objection. To each one his own responsi- 
bility. You call yourself a privateer sailing under let- 
ters of marque from Carthagena and scowl at the im- 
putation of being a bandit, although your rough-hewn 
companions, when you are not with them, perpetrate 
deeds which savor more of the corsair than of the pri- 
vateer. Your position is equivocal ; mine shall be open. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


351 


fj-ank, and above-board. I intend to be a pirate, and 
to hoist the black flag. I will be no half-way man, I 
wish for no quarter, and will give none. I am already 
an outlaw, and a willing one, and will continue to be 
one, even if, on any future trial, I should be held inno- 
cent by a verdict in my favor. I am determined to set 
at defiance all laws, and to know none but those which 
I shall establish for my own government and that of my 
crew. There is room enough here for both of us. Let 
us not interfere with each other, but, in cases of neces- 
sity, unite for our common protection.’ 

‘ He agreed to it, on condition that, when operating 
in concert with him, I should do nothing without his 
consent, and that, when acting on my own hook, I 
should, on my return from my expeditions, refrain from 
communicating to him any atrocity, as he called it, 
which I might have committed. I shrugged my shoul- 
ders at the scruples of one, who, being in for an ounce, 
shrank from being in for a pound. Lafltte, after all, 
was not a complete man, and not above mediocrity. He 
was nothing but a smuggler, not good enough to ‘‘ make 
an honest living by hard work ” according to the com- 
mon phraseology of the moralist, and not bad enougli, 
as the same moralist would probably say, to push the 
logic of evil to its utmost consequences. A sneaking 
smuggler ! Pshaw ! If a smuggler, why not the open 
iron-handed corsair ? This is what I became at once, 
without hesitation, I tell you. With the black flag at 
the top of my mast, I sw'ept over the seas, and princi- 
pally over the Gulf of Mexico. It was a grand life, 
full of emotions, which in your dull plodding career, 
doctor, you cannot conceive. I felt like one of the old 
Scandinavian kings battling against winds and waves, 
and against mankind, and enforcing this universal law 


352 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


of nature : render unto the strong what belongs to tlie 
strong. Ego sum leo. We made of Barataria, which 
was our usual rendezvous^ another Eldorado. What 
piles of gold, silver and merchandise I have seen there ! 
What mad revels under the ever-green magnolias and the 
broad canopy of the moss-covered live-oaks ! What a 
keen relish we had of life, for we knew that we might for- 
feit it at any moment, and we hastened to make the most 
of it ! The United States had set a price on our heads, 
and from the navy of all the nations of the earth we had 
nothing to expect but a broadside, and short shrift if 
made prisoners. On land I permitted my men to do 
what they pleased, I was only their boon companion'. 
But at sea I was their absolute chieftain, and a stern 
one too. The most rigid discipline was enforced ; and 
on its slightest violation a blow from my hoarding ax 
clove the head of the offender. Such are the exigencies 
of war, doctor. There is, I assure you, an indescribable 
charm in that career of constant danger and of what 
you would call crime. I bm*ned every vessel I took, 
and everybody on board had to walk the plank. You 
shudder ! But again, doctor, this is nothing but one of 
the unavoidable necessities of war. It was not to do an 
act of cruelty for the pleasure of being cruel. It was to 
destroy all evidence against us. After all, our victims, 
as a blustering attorney-general would designate them 
in a set speech before a jury, were doomed to die one 
day or other, at random. Of what consequence was it, 
if I assumed to fix the epoch of that inevitable event ? 
Of what importance are the duration of anything so 
brief as life and the mode of its termination ? Wh}^ not 
crush an obnoxious man with as much indifference as a 
buzzing fiy ? How do we know but what the fiy has as 
much right to live as we have, and is of equal weight 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


353 


with any one of ns in the eye of the Creator ? The fact 
is, that I have never been able to see the difference in 
guilt, if guilt there is, between an emperor who causes 
a million of men to be killed for his own purposes of 
grand scale robbery, and a pirate who butchers a few 
of the bipeds to whose race he appertains, merely for pet- 
ty plunder, and to silence voices that might tell on him. 
The one seeks gold and safety in a bucket of blood, the 
other, glory, 'wealth and power in an ocean of the same 
liquid. The world, however, awards a halter to the free- 
booter and a throne to the conqueror. This is the judg- 
ment of man ; the judgment of Gfod remains to be 
known. But to return to our story. On the third of 
January, 1813, there occurred an event which, some 
years afterward, had consequences which I have ever 
since bitterly regretted, although I have become noth- 
ing but a solid mass of stone, or bone ; and this ossifica- 
tion of the heart, doctor, of which I die, is nothing 
perhaps but the ultimate result of the gradual transform- 
ation I have undergone.’ 

This was said with a tone and with a smile which 
made me shiver. What sense of deeply remembered 
wrongs and sufferings it implied ! That man had evi- 
dently been fatally hammered into the h/ird material he 
had become.” 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


THE PATE OF THE DAUGHTER OP AARON BURR REVEALED.— 

GENERAL JACKSON AND THE CORSAIRS OF BARATARIA. 

“ We were,” continued Dominique You, “in the lati- 
tude of Cape Hatteras on the coast of XTorth Carolina, 
when we met a small schooner named the ‘ Patriot,’ 
which had been dismantled by a late storm, and which 
was bound from Charleston, South Carolina, to Xew 
York. She was a vessel ftimous for her sailing quali- 
ties. After many successful privateering cruises against 
the English, she was going home loaded with rich spoils, 
and with her guns stowed below — which circumstance 
made her incapable of defence. We boarded her. She 
was commanded by an experienced captain, and had for 
sailing master an old Kew York pilot noted for his skill 
and courage. Such men could not be allowed to live 
to tell tales, and perhaps avenge their mishap at our 
hands, even if sparing them had not been contrary to 
the regulations of our association. They were slaught- 
ered and thrown overboard wuth the rest of the crew. 
After this execution my men rushed down below, and 
brought up to the deck a woman of surpassing beauty, 
deadly pale, but showing no other signs of terror. She 
looked at us with a sort of serene haughtiness which 
was truly wonderful. She made such an impression on 
( 354 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


355 


me, that I cau almost fancy her now standing in this 
chamber precisely as she stood on that deck. 

“ ‘ Who are you V I said to her. 

‘ Theodosia Burr, the daughter of Aaron Burr, ex- 
vice-president of the United States, and wife of Joseph 
Allston, governor of South Carolina.’ 

‘‘ ‘ A grand conquest,’ exclaimed one of my men, 
‘ and we shall have a jolly time with her.’ And he ad- 
vanced toward her, followed by the rest of the crew. 
She stepped back with an offended look of queenly 
dignity. I planted myself in front of her. 

“ ‘ Back, my men,’ I shouted, ‘ back at the peril of 
your lives. Do n’t you know better ? Do n’t you know 
that I sanction death, but no outrages of the kind you 
contemplate ? Death to prisoners is a necessity of the 
war we wage. Every vessel we take is to be scuttled, 
and every soul on board must perish. That is our 
covenant. In that we are justified on the principle of 
self-defence. But what you intend doing would be, not 
only a mean and cowardly act, but also an atrocious 
crime, because useless for our protection, and not an 
indispensable sacrifice wBich we must make to it. 
Death is in the bond which I signed, but not rape. 
Back then, back ! ’ 

They murmured and seemed to hesitate. I put my 
hand on one of the pistols which I had in my belt, and 
they slowly and sullenly retired to their quarters, leav- 
ing me alone with the lady. 

“ ^ Sir,’ she said, ‘ I thank you ; you have more than 
saved my life.’ 

u < 2 i-egret, madam, that I cannot do more ; that life 
is f()rfeited.’ 

^ It is well. When must it be ? ’ 

“ ‘Uow.’ 


356 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


“ ‘ I am ready ; tlie sooner done, the better for me 
and for yourself, for I am in your way and a source of 
peril to you.’ 

I had the plank laid out. She stepped on it, and 
descended into the sea with graceful composure, as if 
she had been alighting from her carriage. She sank, 
and rising again, she, with an indescribable smile of 
angelic sweetness, waved her hand to me as if she 
meant to say : farewell, and thanks again ; and then 
sank for ever. By the living God ! she must have been 
a splendid creature.” 

“Wretch!” I exclaimed in a burst of indignation. 
“ How dare your lips thus profane the name of God I 
And how dare you confess to me such horrors I Were 
you not dying, I would have you arrested and hung 1” 

“ Precisely, doctor, precisely ; hut I am dying. Pray, 
sit down; I am safe from human justice; and, as to 
your making a scene here under present circumstances, 
it would he decidedly vulgar and in had taste. If you 
cannot hang me, listen at least. You may, when I am 
dead, repeat the story for the information of whom it 
may concern.” 

“ I sank back into my seat as if spell-bound. Domi- 
nique resumed his relation in these words : ” 

“I spare you the history of our other expeditions. 
Suffice it to say that we baffled all the efforts of the 
United States navy to put a stop to our depredations. 
Toward the end of the next year, a powerful English 
fleet had gathered in the Gulf of Mexico, and Louis- 
iana was threatened with the invasion which subse- 
quently took place. You know what happened. Tempt- 
ing offers were made to us in the name of the British 
Government, if we consented to put at its disposal the 
minute knowledge we had of the coast of Louisiana 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


357 


and assist the invaders. Had we, consented to be their 
guides, Louisiana would have been lost. But we were 
Frenchraen, and the sworn foes of England. Besides, 
we had always been secretly entertained with generous 
hospitality in Hew Orleans, and honor as well as grati- 
tude, of which bandits are not always destitute, pre- 
vented the possibility of our lifting up our hands against 
that city. It was agreed, on the contrary, that we 
should offer our services to the Americans* provided the 
past should be forgotten and full amnesty granted. 
Hence Lafitte’s famous letter to Governor Claiborne, 
who, as it is well known, rejected his offer. This is a 
matter of history with which you are familiar, no doubt. 
But General Jackson, on his arrival in Hew Orleans, 
being informed of our propositions, desired an interview 
with Lafitte and sent him a safe conduct for himself 
and for one of his companions. Lafitte chose me to 
accompany him. We were introduced into a room 
where we found the general alone, and standing with 
his back to a chimney in which there was a blazing fire. 
He bowed courteously as we entered. For a moment 
he looked keenly at us. He seemed to be making a 
critical survey of what he probably thought to be dan- 
gerous ground. ‘ Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘ do you speak 
English V We answered in the affirmative. 

“ ‘ I am glad of it,’ he said, ‘ for we shall need no in- 
terpreter. Which of you is Lafitte ? ’ 

You have him before you in my person,’ replied 
Lafitte, ‘ and my friend here is named Dominique You.’ 

“ Again a scrutinizing glance from the general. 
Meanwhile, we had returned the compliment, and had 
been examining the commander of the United States 
forces. He was of middle size, spare, wiry, evidently 
all steel. His hair was erect and bristling like the quills 


358 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


of the porcupine. There was in that stiff hair, in that 
chin, in that mouth, in that nose, in those gray eyes, 
and in the deep furrows of that face and forehead an 
expression which could not be mistaken. It clearly 
said to the physiognomist : I have a will of my own 
which no mortal can change or influence. I immedi- 
ately felt a strong sympathy for him. * What a magnifl- 
cent corsair he would have made, if driven into it by 
circumstance — that despotic and Omnipotent ruler of 
man ! 

‘‘ ‘ Lafitte,’ said the general, ^ how many men can you 
bring to me ? ’ 

‘ Three hundred, and splendid fighters too.’ 

“ The' general smiled with grim satisfaction. ‘ I 
need every soul of them all,’ he said, ‘ for the defence 
of Louisiana. I am short of men, and particularly of such 
as are capable. of working artillery. My guns are few 
and must be well managed. I will confide most of them 
to you. Governor Claiborne and everybody else 
around me, save General Yillere, are for refusing your 
services. I will dare to accept them. I will go further; 
I will, as I have said, intrust you with my artillery.’ 

‘ We will render to you, general, a good account of 
it,’ said Lafitte. 

“ ‘ I rely on your word. The world calls you bandits ; 
I will call you gentlemen, and treat you as such. You 
are Frenchmen, and you will suroly not forget that it is 
against the hereditary enemies of France that we are 
in arms. If you have committed crimes, let British 
blood wash you clean ; let your services in a just cause 
redeem your guilt. The United States will forgive all 
violations of their laws on your part. Prepare your- 
selves to receive on a well-fought field the baptism of 
regeneration.’ 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


359 


‘ General,’ I replied, ^ whatever we have done, we 
acknowledge no other judge on earth than ourselves. I 
must confess that, according to certain articles of tlie 
code of morality which governs the so-called Christian 
nations, we must be considered as having in us more 
of the bandit than of the gentleman. ^Nevertheless, 
bandits of our calibre, whatever may be their crimes, 
never betray, but keep inviolate their plighted faith.’ 

“ ‘ Let us shake hands on that,’ said the general, ‘ for 
were you to betray me, nothing would remain for me 
to do, after reposing so much trust in you in opposition 
to the advice of all those in authority here, but to blow 
my brains with the same hand that you grasp.’ 

“ ‘ If you die only in consequence of treachery on our 
part,’ replied Lafitte, ‘ you will live long, general.’ 

‘‘ ‘ Very well, gentlemen. From this moment you 
are in the service of the United States,, and you shall 
soon receive my orders.’ 

He then bowed us out of the room. Doctor, some- 
body, I believe, wrote a book on the ‘ Curiosities of 
Literature.’ If you ever write one on the ‘ Curiosities 
of History,’ do not forget to mention in it that three 
hundred smugglers and pirates had the singular luck to 
be courted at the same time and their assistance invoked 
by Great Britain and the United States ; that they con- 
tributed to save Louisiana from foreign conquest, and 
thus were instrumental in restoring peace between those 
two powerful belligerents.” 

‘‘ Here he stopped, and gasped for breath. I motioned 
to him to take rest. After a little while he thus con- 
tinued his narrative : ” 

“ On the 8th of January, 1815, when the battle had 
begun, and the artillery was roaring on both sides, 
Jackson came galloping rapidly along the lines. When 


360 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


he reached mj battery, he stopped short his foaming 
horse : ‘ By the eternal !’ he exclaimed. ‘ What does 
it mean, Dominique ? How come your guns to be 
silent V 

‘ Because, general, I never waste time in using bad 
powder.’ 

“ He turned to an officer who was near him, and 
thundered out: ‘If, in five minutes, Dominique has 
not got such powder as he approves, I will make your 
head fly from your shoulders.’ 

“ I soon had the powder which I wanted, and the 
British were not slow in discovering that at their costs. 
When the general returned, he stopped again, and 
waving his hat over his head, shouted : ‘ Hurrah ! 
Dominique, your fire is splendid.’ 

“ ‘ By St. Andrew, your patron,’ I replied, ‘ I will 
make it a point, general, to keep up this fire until the 
victory is yours. You shall not repent of having trust- 
ed the bandit Dominique.’ 

“ After the defeated Britons had retreated with 
humiliation from Louisiana, we determined also to 
abandon our old nests within her western bays, inlets 
and lakes. We broke up our establishments and went 
to South America. One day, talking with Lafitte of 
our past life, which was so strikingly in contrast with the 
peaceful, easy and law abiding one we were leading, I 
thought that, as our copartnership had so long ceased to 
exist and the responsibility of all my acts was entirely 
mine, I was released from the agreement I had entered 
into with him when I first joined him at Barataria. 
Partly for that reason, and partly because I was some- 
what heated by the convivialities of which we had 
both partaken, I ventured on the once forbidden ground, 
and I related some remarkable scenes of which I had 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


361 


retained a vivid recollection — among others, the superb 
manner in which Theodosia Burr had met death. 
Lafitte, who had always had a sort of womanly tender- 
ness lurking in some corner of his heart, became excited 
and abusive. Hai-sh words passed between us. He 
entirely lost the command of his temper and struck me 
in the face. Swift as lightning my dagger was buried 
in his breast, and he fell at my feet. Thus he had the 
good fortune of a sudden death, whilst I have been 
lingering under the torture of this incurable disease. 
But I feel exhausted .... my breath fails .... 
what is it ? . . . .. I . . . I . . . suffocate, doctor, I 
suf. . . .” 

‘‘He did not complete the utterance of the word. 
His sufferings were ended in this world. I was pre- 
paring to depart, when the nurse said : ‘ According to 
the request of your late patient, now dead, 1 present to 
you this dagger which he bequeaths to you, this letter 
and this small package.’ I opened the letter. It was 
short and ran thus : 

“ ‘ Dear Doctor, — I thank you gratefully for your kind 
attendance, which I did not deserve and which I hardly 
expected, considering the light in which you must have 
regarded me. Lafitte is of historical importance in 
your state. I bequeath to you the dagger which put 
an end to his existence. I am alone in the world and 
care for nobody. You are entitled to the most liberal 
remuneration for your medical services, and particularly 
for the gratification which you afforded me in keeping 
me company every day, perhaps for a longer time than 
you could well spare. I will repay you munificently 
for what you have done on my behalf. In the package 
which will be delivered to you are certain papers in 


3G2 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


•which you will find an accurate description of a place, 
where 1 left buried an immense treasure. It is in that’ 
part of Barataria Lake called the ‘ Temple.’ I had 
determined not to touch it, except on the happening of 
a certain contingency. That contingency had occurred, 
and I was on my way to the place I have mentioned, 
when I became too ill to execute my intentions. That 
treasure shall be your fee. I need no longer any thing. 
The war of life is over with me in this world. Shall it 
continue in the next ? Signed: Dominique, 

THE BANDIT.’” 

The Doctor stopped, took back the dagger which I 
was still retaining in my hand, and thrust it into his 
coat pocket. 

“ Quick ! quick !” said I eagerly. “ Tell me what 
you found in the package. I am anxious to know how 
rich you will be.” 

“ It was closely and carefully enveloped,” said the 
doctor, and secured with a large black seal bearing 
the impress of a cross made with two daggers sur- 
mounted by a skeleton’s head. My first impulse was 
to break the ominous seal ; the next, followed by im- 
mediate action, was to throw it into the fire, where it 
was speedily consumed.” 

By the gods,” I exclaimed, and why ?” 

Simply because there are dwelling in man two 
spirits at war with each other — the one good, the other 
bad. Qn that occasion, the good spirit prevailed over 
its antagonist. The bad one had prompted me to open 
the package ; the good one whispered to me : Thou 
must not break such a seal ; it is of the devil. Thou 
shalt not pollute thy honest hands with a treasure 
which reeks with blood and smells of murder. The 
result was what I have stated. How, good nighf 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


363 


Tintin Calandro sleeps well and does not need me for 
the present.” 

I shook my departing friend’s hand with a more 
energetic grasp than I had ever done before. Poor 
Phineberg !' I alone ever appreciated him to his value. 
He was a genius of a physician. As a lecturer on the 
science to which he was so devoted, he would have 
attracted crowds in Europe and become famous. I 
have heard many members of his profession express 
that opinion. But, alas, he had the simplicity of a 
child, and had an incurable modesty which sometimes 
fretted me into anger. He could not blow his horn to 
attract attention, and never thought of* advertising his 
truly admirable cures, and would not have permitted 
others to do it for him, so morbidly afraid was he of ap- 
pearing to resort to any mountebank practices. Add 
to these fated deficiencies in his character an inexhaust- 
ible fund of charity. Hence his merit remained under 
the bushel, and competitors, not worthy of untying the 
strings of his shoes, easily out-stripped him in the race 
of success. He lived and died poor, leaving to me 
Dominique You’s dagger, which killed Lafitte. The 
deadly weapon hangs over the mantelpiece of my fire- 
place in my library,' and daily recalls to my remem- 
brance my departed friend Khineberg, and his refusal 
of the treasufe which lies concealed in the Temple ” 
in Lake Barataria. 


CHAPTEE XXX. 


THE CARNIVAL OP VENICE IN THE ST. LOUIS CEMETERY. — 
THE ACTRESS GRISELDA AND THE SPANISH DUKE. — 
BACKBONE AND SADFISH, OR GOOD AND BAD LUCK. 

, According to the prognostics of the doctor, Tintin 
Calandro continued to improve, although it seemed to 
me that the aberrations of his mind were more marked 
than before. He had lately spoken repeatedly of re- 
turning to his usual avocations in the St. Louis ceme- 
tery, when came Shrove-Tuesday, or mardi gras. In 
the evening of that day, happening to call on him, he 
said to me : “ I must have a night of it with my friends 
the dead. They are all rejoicing at my convalescence, 
and they are bent on celebrating it with a hall. I will 
play for them an overture on the occasion. Then, I 
will leave them to their own musicians ; for they have 
good ones among themselves, I assure you.” I ear- 
nestly remonstrated against the determination he had 
taken. I begged him not to forget that he was still 
very feeble, and that fatigue and exposure might bring 
on a relapse. But I pleaded in vain, so that, at nine 
o’clock, we departed together for the cemetery. When 
Tintin had passed its gate, and when he trod on the 
sacred soil within its gray walls, he looked round with a 
glow of satisfaction on his weird face ; his step became 
more firm and his whole body seemed invigorated. 

“ Ho ! ho !” he exclaimed. “ I knew that they 
( 304 ) 


ex- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


365 


pected me ; see liow they flock round and greet poor 
Tintin Calandro. Good night, my friends, good night. 
I am sincerely glad to meet you again in my capacity 
of a denizen of this world, which I am soon to quit, but 
only to join you for ever in the spiritual one. In the 
meantime, we will have for once a merry time of it. 
The broken-down old man will play for you, although 
his heart is full of grief. Come on, not a moment is to 
be lost, for I cannot stay long with you. My keeper 
here,” he said with a smile and pointed at me, “ will 
not permit it. Sit down all of you on those tombs ; 
be silent and motionless, or you will confuse me ; my 
head is weak. That’s right, very well, that’s the way 
I like it ; and now, hurrah for the carnival of the 
spirits ! Here it goes, four in hand and a crack of the 
whip — folly imchained, and the devil chasing it with a 
halloo.” 

Seizing with a frantic grasp the violin which I had 
carried for him, he dashed the swift bow on the strings, 
over which it swept in a semi-circle, electrifying them 
into the production of a grand musical storm, in which 
all sorts of melodies seemed to rush pell-mell in a wild 
gallop. Listen to this joyous burst of all known in- 
struments, acting sometimes in harmonious concert, and 
sometimes engaged in emulous contest for pre-eminence 
— a perfect and complete orchestra. One could hear 
the gleesome castanets of the Spanish fandango, the 
sprightly tunes of the Neapolitan dances, the German 
waltz, the old French minuet, the modern cotillion, the 
Kussian mazourka, the Scottish reel, the American jig, 
and all the favorite dancing airs of most of the nations 
of the earth, successively following one another, or 
blending together with the most striking and admirable 
effect. Fast came the squeaks of Punchinello, the shi-ill 


366 


.^.\XVAJVDO DE LEM OS. 


laugh of the Mo.iry Andrew, the rush of the pleasure- 
intoxicated c.'owd wh'rling round under the spell of the 
demon of the hour, .li^ow and then the wildest and 
most unearthly shouts cl I've through the hot and dense 
bacchanalian atmosphere. It \7as the deviPs halloo 
urging the sons and daughters of carnival to speed 
faster in their race of mad frolic, and faster went the 
whirlwind of feet, more piercing the squeaks of Punch- 
inello, more sharp the laugh of Merry Andrew, and 
more brilliant, more fascinating, more soul-ravishing the 
strains which gushed like a torrent from the super- 
natural instrument of the maniac. I have since heard 
the celebrated Carnival of Venice executed by Pag- 
anini. But Tintin Oalandro was more wonderful than 
Paganini an*d Possini. Hever did they produce in me 
such emotions. So intense grew my excitement, that 
I felt as if a sort of hallucination was coming over me. 
I fancied that I saw the scene which Tintin depicted, 
and that an irresistible attraction was drawing me Avith- 
in the vortex of the insane crew that shot by with a 
velocity which it made me giddy to look at, as if it had 
been a living reality. Fortunately, the musician stop- 
ped. I drew a long breath. 

Spirits,” said Tintin, I have done, and sufficient- 
ly prepared you for the enjoyments you expect to have. 
Now, quick, select your partners for the dance, the ball 
is open, and let me see you begin the sport.” 

Tintin remained a little while with folded arms, look- 
ing round with as much interest as if he really saw 
something pleasant to his sight. Very well, very 
well,” he said. All goes well. Now I leave you. A 
good night to you and a merry one until the cock 
crows.” And, taking me by the arm, he whispered : 

Hist ! hist ! listen. Is it not truly a creditable per- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


307 


formance — a very fair orcliestra ? The leader of it was 
the chief musician in the St. Philip Theatre, when first 
established. I will tell you, as we walk home, what 
befell him, poor fellow, under the Spanish colonial gov- 
ernment of Louisiana : 

Ernest Yanderlingen w'as a portrait painter of con- 
siderable talent and an excellent performer on the violin. 
He had in an eminent degree those peculiarities of 
temper and habit which are said to be the common 
characteristics of artists, and he had led for several 
years a sort of Bohemian life, during which he had 
visited all the capitals of Europe, in each one of which 
lie had sojourned some time, making a living by his 
brush and violin. At Prague he had married a gypsy, 
and the offspring of that union was a daughter called 
Griselda. I do not now recollect what were the cir- 
cumstances which brought that family to 'New Orleans, 
but, shortly after their arrival in this city, Yanderlin- 
gen lost his wife, and there remained nothing to con- 
sole him save an infant girl on whom all his affections 
centered at once. True to her origin, she was an ad- 
mirable specimen of the gypsy style of beauty — the 
large, dark and lustrous oriental eyes, the olivaceous 
complexion, the glossy and silky hair, raven-like in its 
hue, the exquisitely delicate hands and feet, the oval 
face, the nose and mouth so pure in their outlines, the 
pearly teeth, the whole body full of symmetry and grace 
and as flexible as the willow. She was indeed a thing 
of beauty and passion — beauty redolent with youth, life 
and innocence — and passion yet asleep — but which, in 
its slumber, looked as if it could wake up suddenly and 
rage with uncontrollable fury. Any one believing, as 
many do, that the gypsy originally came from the far- 
famed land of Egypt, would have been apt to fancy, 


368 


FEIiNANDO DE LEMOS. 


when beholding Griselda, that such must hare been the 
witchery of the charms of Cleopatra. Her father being 
the leader of the orchestra of the St. Pliilip Theatre, 
she had become early acquainted with actors and ac- 
tresses. She conceived a fondness for stage life, and, 
at sixteen, she made her appearance on the boards. She 
carried the audience by storm ; it was a perfect furor. 
At the time when the enthusiasm she inspired was at 
its height, there came to New Orleans a young grandee 
of Spain, called Yillalva, who was a distant relation of 
the Baron of Carondelet, then governor of Louisiana. 
Yillalva became so desperately in love with this hourly 
that he carried it so' far as to propose matrimony, on 
discovering that he could not gratify his passion in any 
other way. The spirited girl refused, on the ground 
that she could not rise up to him and would be con- 
temptuously rejected by his family. His reply was : 

‘ I will then descend to you, and only beg to be accept- 
ed by you and your parent.’ 

One day, the whole population of New Orleans was 
convulsed with the news that the young duke of Yillal- 
va, allied to several of the royal houses of Europe, had 
joined the troop of actors of the St. Philip theatre, and 
was shortly to appear in a celebrated piece of Lope de 
Yega, in wLich two lovers, being crossed in their love, 
meet wuth a tragic end at their own hands. It is use- 
less to say that, on the evening of the expected per- 
formance, every seat was taken and the theatre crowded 
to suffocation. Even a large crowd remained outside, 
talking excitedly, and gazing at the building into which 
they could not penetrate. In the royal box always 
reserved for the use of the representative of his Catho- 
lic Majesty, the Baron of Carondelet sat alone. His 
family had stayed at home, probably as a sign of dis- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


369 


pleasure at the course pursued by their relative, and the 
usually benign face of the baron was observed by all to 
wear a striking expression of sternness. The curtain 
rose ; Griselda and the new actor, with all the blue 
blood of Spain in his veins, were greeted with enthusi- 
astic shouts and plaudits. They both acted admirably, 
with the most extraordinary spirit, and almost with 
genius like inspiration. But, during one of the entre- 
acts^ w^hen the actors were behind the scenes, the duke 
received the following note : 

“‘Most distinguished sir, — I hasten to warn you 
against the perils which threaten your excellency and her 
whom you love, although I am afraid it is too late. But 
I could not do it sooner. The theatre is now surrounded 
with troops ; escape is impossible. At the end of the 
j^lay, you and Griselda will be arrested. Two ships 
are ready to sail by order of the governor. One will 
carry Griselda to some unknown fortress, and the other 
will take your excellency to Spain, where the king, at 
the request of your family, will provide against your 
not being able to pei*petrate what is called an incom- 
prehensible folly. Signed : A Friend.’ 

“ This note was communicated by the duke to Gris 
elda, and their resolution was instantly taken. The 
final act of the play remained to be performed. The 
scene in which the lovers had to express their despair 
at the inevitable separation to which they were des- 
tined, was portrayed with such pathos, that the whole 
audience was melted into tears, and held its breath in 
awful suspense, ’when the heroine of the play invites 
her lover to plunge his dagger into her breast rather 
than allow her to be the bride of another. But what 
16 * 


370 


FERNANDO BE LEMOS. 


was the horror of the assembly when the blow was 
struck in earnest, and a purple stream gushed from the 
bosorr of Griselda, who reeled and fell on the stage ! 
Shrieks after shrieks rose from every part of the thea- 
tre. But among those shrieks there was one which 
never could be forgotten by those whose ears it ap- 
palled. It burst out of the agonizing heart of the 
father of Griselda, clear, frightfully distinct, and recog- 
nized by all. He leaped frantically from the orchestra 
to the stage, and lifted up his dying daughter in his 
arms. She looked at him with a smile, and said : 
‘Father, I die happy.’ These were her last words. 
Meanwhile, the young duke had approached the box 
of the governor, which was close to the stage, and, 
shaking his bloody weapon in his face, exclaimed: 
‘ Baron and loving cousin, tell the king and my family 
what you have seen. I defy you all, and I go to join 
her from whom no human power can now separate me.’ 
These words were hardly uttered when the sharp blade 
was buried to its hilt into his own breast, and he fell 
dead by the senseless form of Griselda. From that 
day Y anderlingen became mad, and was confined in a 
lunatic asylum, until he was brought here. Poor 
thing ! How terrible it is to be mad ! I should not 
like to be mad. It is too shocking. Mad from grief! 
O horror of horrors ! Mad from grief! Such was the 
fate of Yanderlingen. Thank God, Tintin Calandro 
is not mad, not mad from grief. Ho. Oh ! no. I am 
not mad, not I. I am not mad.” I took him home 
whilst he kept repeating to himself : “ thank God, poor 
Tintin Calandro is not mad — not mad from grief.” 

A few days afterward, I was with Tintin Calandro in 
the St. Louis cemetery, examining a tomb which had 
been offered for sale; It was a monument of plain 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


371 


'white marble surrounded by an iron railing, and over- 
shadowed by a willow tree whose drooping branches 
seemed to weep in sympathizing sorrow. This tomb 
was located in a retired spot, near two of the enclosing 
'walls which met at right angles. It had been con- 
structed for a Frenchman who had grown old in Hew 
Orleans in the pursuit of wealth without attaining it, 
but who had unexpectedly inherited a large fortune in 
his native country, whither he had determined to re- 
turn without loss of time, and enjoy what remained to 
him of life. Hence the tomb which he had prepared 
for himself was advertised for sale to the highest bid- 
der. There was an air of repose about it which must 
have been inviting to all spirits weary of the torments 
of existence. We were withdrawing from that spot, 
when a doleful-looking man, on the verge of old age, 
approached us, and said to Tintin that he had come to 
buy the tomb in question. On his being told that it had 
just been sold, the stranger heaved a deep sigh of dis- 
tress, and his already very gloomy face assumed a more 
sombre hue. 

“ Good God !” he exclaimed. Shall I forever be 
disappointed in every thing I desire, and shall I not 
even be buried as I choose? I had set my heart 
/ on having this tomb. It follows as a matter of course 
that I cannot have it. I ought not, however, to be as- 
tonished, for it is of a piece with every thing that has 
happened to me since my infancy — a beautiful con- 
sistency and harmony running through the whole dra- 
ma from beginning to end. And pray, sir,’’ he said, 
turning to Tintin, who is the fortunate purchaser of 
the last object I coveted in this world ?” 

His name is Thomas Backbone,” was the reply. 

Heavens !” cried the stranger. Can this be pos- 


372 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


sible ? Still is tlie same man in my way, even on the 
very brink of the grave — that man who was born to be 
the bane of my whole life I” 

As he remarked our astonishment, he invited us to 
take seats on a bench which was close by in one of the 
alleys of the cemetery, promising us an explanation of 
the language he had used. After we were seated, he 
thus addressed us : 

‘‘My name is John Sadfish, and the person to whom 
I have alluded is Thomas Backbone, my first cousin, 
both of us natives of Philadelphia. We were left desti- 
tute orphans by our parents, whom we lost in early life 
and who were Catholics. Fortunately wo had an ec- 
centric, kind-hearted old Quaker uncle, an inveterate 
bachelor, who took care of us without finding fault with 
the church in which we had been born. He amply 
provided for our wants, for he was rich and generous, 
and sent us both to school witli the determination to 
make thorough and brilliant scholars of us if possible, 
(that was his hobby) and with the explicit declaration 
that he would leave the bulk of ‘his fortune to Thomas, 
or to me, according to the superiority which one might 
acquire over the other. Thomas plodded heavily through 
his studies — a respectable student by his ox-like plough- 
ing and steady labor in a hard field, but as dull and 
ponderous as lead. As to myself, I was always at the 
head of every class I was in ; yet, strange to say, and 
unaccountable as it was to me, the fame of my success 
never spread out of the college walls, whilst Thomas’ 
negative career as a student was, by some inexplicable 
hocus pocus, or freak of luck, magnified into one of 
brilliant achievements. Many said, it is true, that he 
was a confirmed blockhead, but others maintained that 
something— they could not exactly tell what — would 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


373 


yet come out of that head, and that in that block, rongh- 
hewn as it was from the quarry, and valueless sand-stone 
as it appeared to he, more than one vein of gold would, 
in the course of time, he discovered. I was then puzzled 
at the obstinacy with which these conjectures were en- 
tertained by some people in relation to my desperately 
stupid cousin. But, as I grew older, my wonder ceased, 
for I discovei’ed that in this world of obliquities, it fre 
quently happens that, by some optical illusion, the buz 
zard on the hill is taken for an eagle, and the eagle in 
the valley is taken for a buzzard. What is high up 
basking in the light, is supposed to be worthy of it, and 
what is low down in the deep shadows, must be foul 
and creeping. Be* it as it may; we had gone at last 
through our intended course of collegiate education, and 
the day when our academical probation was to cease, 
rapidly approached. We were at Cowhurst College in 
New Jersey. That institution had of late been losing 
ground, and the public patronage was gradually with- 
drawing itself. Therefore it had been resolved by the 
trustees and managers of that establishment, to have a 
grand display and flourish of trumpets at the end of the 
scholastic year. Long before the time for the closing 
of the exercises and the beginning of vacation, adver- 
tisements and invitations had been extensively circu- 
lated, and a great concourse was expected from New 
York, Philadelphia, Boston and other places, to witness 
the exhibition of the merits of the scholars who were to 
make their exit, and the distribution of prizes and di- 
])lomas. The elite of the elite, the cream of the cream 
of the intellectual and flnancial aristocracy of the coun- 
try was to be there. A grand prize in particular was 
to be contended for. It consisted in a gold medal bear- 
ing the effigy of Washington on one side, and on the 


374 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


Other an eagle with outspread wings, carrying the globe 
of the earth in its talons and the thunderbolt of Jove 
in its beak. This was the reward to be given to that 
pupil of Cowhurst College who should be deemed tc 
have treated with the most ability, a theme on which 
w^e had been given ample time to reflect and to write, 
“ The subject was : ‘ The Destinies of America.’ Of 
course, America meant the United States, for the Uni^ 
ted States are America, it being ascertained beyond f 
doubt by our most distinguished naturalists, that oui 
enlightened and freeborn citizens constitute alone tin. 
genus homo on this continent, and that all the othei 
bipeds who are outside the sacred precincts of our self 
sufficient and perfect government, which diffuses moral 
ity, civilization, religion, wealth, education, happiness, 
republicanism and many other isms, with the liberality 
and beneficial effects with which the sun diffuses light, 
have no claim whatever to be ranked much above the 
kangaroo.” 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


CONTINUATIOI^ OF THE STORY OF SADFISH ANT) BACKBOJTE, 
OR GOOD AND BAD DUCK. 

I WORKED day and night with indefatigable ardor,” 
continued Sadhsh, ‘‘on the grand Homeric subject which 
had been laid before me. Besides the literary fame 
which was to be acquired, there was another stimulant 
for me — which was, that my uncle’s accumulated treas- 
ures were to be the reward of my success. The mo- 
mentous day of judgment for me was fast drawing near. 
On the one preceding it, the pupils contending for the 
prize had to submit their contributions to a conclave of 
men of letters, who were to meet at Cowhurstville, and 
who were to be presided over by no less a personage 
than J ohn Adams, whose presence the Trustees of Cow- 
hurst College were exceedingly rejoiced at having se- 
cured. My composition had been transcribed with the 
utmost calligraphic skill on the most beautiful paper I 
could find, for I knew the value of appearances and 
how repulsive is an illegible scrawl. Being neatly rolled 
up and tied with a blue ribbon, it was lying on a chair, 
whilst I was dressing to appear before the assembled 
tribunal, to which each competitor was to present in 
person his lucubration. Judge of my dismay, when, 
after being dressed, I looked in vain for my manuscript ! 
It was impossible to account for its mysterious disap- 
pearance, and too late to repair the mischief done and 
make another copy. I became ill from vexation, and 

(375) 


376 


FERiVANDO DE LEMOS. 


took to my bed. A strong fever set in ; I was delirious 
for several days, and, when I recovered my senses, I 
discovered that a dog, which Thomas Backbone had 
trained to pick up anything it found in its way, and to 
fetch it to him, had entered my room unperceived, and 
that, attracted, it seems, by the glittering roll of paper 
adorned with ribbons, it had taken hold of it and car- 
ried it to Backbone, who had the audacity to use it as 
his own. My composition procured for him the much 
coveted medal and a flattering commendation from the 
venerated lips of John Adams. It was published in 
most of the leading papers of our principal cities, and 
made Backbone famous. When I reproached him with 
his treachery and his impudent imposture, he laughed 
and said : That he did not know at the time who the writer 
was ; that, after all, it was a waif, a windfall which he 
thought he could avail himself of ; that it was his dog’s 
treasure-trove ; that what belonged to his dog, whose 
possessory rights he was not called upon to question, 
belonged to him, until a superior right to the property 
was made out ; that it was a present from his canine 
friend, and that a given horse is not to be looked in the 
mouth.’ He fought me off with such madcap logic, af- 
fecting to treat the whole affair as a capital joke. But 
the worst of it was, that before I could inform my uncle 
of the trick of- which I had been the victim, the old gen- 
tleman died suddenly, leaving to me a mere pittance, 
and the bulk of his fortune to his other nephew, who, 
as he believed, had reflected so much honor on his fami- 
ly. Thus a dog had ruined one man, and enriched an- 
other. So much for what we generally call good luck, 
and bad luck ! But was it really an accident, and had 
not that dog risen to the dignity of a providential agent ? 

I need not say how low-spirited I became. All my 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


377 


hopes were blasted at the beginiung of my career. It 
was the first blow struck at my young heart, and, on 
that account, it was more keenly felt than aU those 
which I subsecpiently received ; for man becomes 
metallic, when laid out too long on the anvil, and har- 
dens under the hammer of an unrelenting destiny. But 
I had not then gone through that delectable process of 
induration. Hence my health visibly declined, and I 
was getting worse every day, when the first clerk of the 
Secretary of State at Washington informed me, at the 
request of his wife to whom I was distantly related, 
that important despatches were to be sent to France, 
and that, if I consented, he would have me appointed 
the bearer of them — thus giving me at the cost of the 
government the opportunity of a trip across the ocean, 
by which my health might be benefited, and of a pleas- 
ant visit to a foreign country, which then attracted 
universal attention by the mighty revolution that had 
shattered to pieces the oldest monarchy of Europe. I 
accepted the proposition with gratitude. This was in 
1792. I was kindly received by our minister plenipo- 
tentiary, who insisted on my becoming his guest, add- 
ing playfully that he liked to keep all Americans as 
close to him as possible, particularly the young and in- 
experienced, for fear that they should be mistaken for 
aristocrats, whose manners they are very fond of imitat- 
ing, and have their heads chopped off before he could be 
made aware of their danger. Two weeks after, I was 
greatly surprised, when, at one of the evening recep- 
tions of our minister, I saw Thomas Backbone come in 
with his usual imperturbable composure. There was 
leaning on his arm another Thomas — no less than 
Thomas Payne, of half Quaker and half Voltairian 
breed, the world-renowned philanthropic innovator, 


378 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


the author of ‘ Common Sense,’ of the ^ Age of 
Reason,’ of the ^ Rights of Man,’ and other works, in 
which he attempted to prove, that, before his advent on 
earth, there never had been any common sense or 
reason in it, and that he alone had discovered the 
‘ rights of man ’ buried under the rubbish of ages 
since the original creation of the universe. I gazed 
with curiosity at the ubiquitous demagogue who had 
made himself so conspicuous at the same time — in Eng- 
land, France and America — in England where hang- 
men had burned his writings and himself in effigy, and 
from which he was a fugitive — in France, where he 
was to be hugged at first to the tender bosom of Robes- 
pierre, as long as he sang to the tune of that apostle of 
the goddess of reason, and where he was to be incarce- 
rated and doomed to the guillotine, which he narrowly 
escaped, as soon as it was discovered by the knights of 
the Carmagnole and the proclaimers and champions of 
the ‘ rights of man,’ that he was not quite as much of a 
blood-thirsty tiger as they expected — in America, where 
the once popular advocate of our independence was to 
run the risk of being assassinated by an unknown hand, 
and where, forgetting that he lived in an age ctf progres- 
sive virtue, the reformer of society died a drunkard on 
his farm near Kew Rochelle in the State of FTew York, 
leaving a rotten carcass, to which a Quaker burial was 
refused by that religious society, to which his family, if 
not he, had belonged. It is laughable to think of what 
occurred, when the conversion of Payne was attempted 
a few days before his death. That attempt was made 
by the founders of a new church, called ^ Rew Jerusa- 
lem.’ This ‘ 'New Jerusalem ’ came from Baltimore 
in the shape of a soul-saving deputation. The spokes- 
man of these missionaries told the d3dng man, that they 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


379 


did not find fault with him on account of his opposition 
to the Bible, such as it was generally interpreted — 
which interpretation, of course, could have no sense for 
the author of ‘ Common Sense but that they had dis- 
covered in the New Jerusalem the true key to the Holy 
Book — a key which had been lost for many centuries, 
and which would open to him the sealed casket of 
eternal truths. ‘ Go to,’ was the cynical reply, ‘ if 
that key has been so long lost, it must be too rusty to 
be of any use.’ As you see, Payne was not consistent. 
He forgot that he also was the finder of a very rusty key 
— the key to the ‘ rights of man,’ and that, notwithstand- 
ing the antediluvian date of the manufacturing of that 
key by the eternal blacksmith, he thought that it could 
yet fit the lock of the ‘ age of reason.’ Perhaps an ami- 
able, but surely an egotistical and vain-glorious delusion. 

Let us return to Backbone, from whom we have di- 
gressed. On learning my departure from home, my lov- 
ing cousin, either in a spirit of imitation or from a 
vague instinct that he might profit by any mishap of 
mine, had taken to ship and landed in England. One 
morning. Backbone who, the evening before, had in- 
dulged too freely in convivialities with a certain set of 
rakes and radicals, woke up with an excruciating head- 
ache. He rang for some tea. When brought, it was 
cold and vapid. He flung it with cup and saucer at the 
waiter, who beat a hasty retreat. Another puU at the 
bell, and another waiter appeared. ‘Sirrah,’ bawled 
out Backbone, who liked to borrow words from the 
Shakespearean vocabulary, ‘ send or bring me my boots, 
I charge thee. How is it that they are not at my door V 
Waiter vanished, and the boots came up according to 
ordei’, but they were an extravagantly worn-out pair, 
and not the glossy new ones which he had taken off 


380 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


when he went to bed. In a fit of rage, for there ia 
something of the hotspur in Backbone, he seized one 
of these relics of the past, and knocked on the head 
with it the unfortunate menial who had them in charge. 
The fellow reeled under the blow, but, soon recovering 
himself, took a theatrical attitude. Folding his arms 
on his breast, with an evident exhibition of extreme 
self-importance, he said : 

“ ‘ Are you aware, sir, of what you have done V 

‘‘ ‘Yes. I have knocked you down with an old rag 
of a boot. What then 

“ ‘ Do you know who I am V 

“ ‘ 1^0, nor do I care a chew of tobacco to know it. 
My name is Backbone, damn you, and I am an Ameri- 
can, ready to meet you or any body else.’ 

“ ‘ An American !’ exclaimed he of the bruised 
head. ‘ How fortunate ! Then, I can open myself to 
you in all security. Sir, you have before you Thomas 
Payne, who, being hunted by bailiffs like a wolf, has 
been reduced to take this disguise to escape from them, 
and whose only crime is an attempt to pull down the 
tyrannical Guelphs from the throne of England, and 
transform the velvet-lined and gilded seat of the Plan- 
tagenets into the raw-hide bottomed chair of an Amer- 
can Cincinnatus.’ 

“ The United States were then in the honeymoon of 
their institutions. They had the credulity and inno- 
cence of youth, for they had just sprung up into a new 
type of existence. They greatly admired Thomas 
Payne and the principles contained in their own de- 
claration of independence. In the intoxication of pat- 
riotism, many then believed, notwithstanding the pro- 
test of nature staring them in the face, that all men 
were born free and equal ; and, in case this should be a 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


381 


inere figure of speech, they felt sure at least, that, iu 
such i republic as they had lately inaugurated, Ihe most 
virtuous and the most enlightened citizens would al- 
ways be called to office by acclamation. They believed 
in it with as much faith as little children believe in 
Mother Goose, despite the indignant cackling negation 
of the geese in the poultry-yard, as to the human part 
which one of their feathered tribe is made to assume. 
But the tales of the political nursery, where manhood 
gallops childishly on a stick with only the shirt of folly 
on, are often as fabulous and nonsensical as those of the 
nursery where is rocked the cradle of infancy. Back- 
bone was not yet free from the leading strings with 
which he had been I'aistd. The consequence was, that 
he flung himself at the feet of Payne in a paroxysm of 
contrition, and begged pardon, after the fashion of sav- 
ages, for having flogged his idol. That pardon was 
magnanimously granted, and Payne told his worshiper 
that he was anxious to reach Dover, where he wished to 
embark for Calais, because he had been elected to the 'Na- 
tional Convention of France by the department in which 
that city is situated, although a foreigner and personally 
unknown. Payne had not a cent in his pocket. Backbone 
lent him what he needed, and they crossed the straits 
together with American passports, Backbone as the 
master and Payne as the valet. On arriving at Calais, 
Payne learned that several other departments had also 
elected him — an Englishman — in preference to French- 
men — him who knew nothing of France, and who 
neither spoke nor understood one word of French. 
Evidently we were in the ‘Age of Beason,’ or such a 
thing could not have happened. Payne acted with 
proper courtesy. As he had been first elected by the 
department of the Pas de Calais^ he accepted that 


38 ? 


FEJ^NANDO DE LEMOS. 


election in preference to the election of much more in- 
fluential departments, such, for instance, as the depart- 
ment in which Yersailles is located — Yersailles, wliich 
owed its birth and prosperity to kings, and which had 
chosen for its representative their most mortal enemy. 
"When Payne and Backbone landed at Calais, they 
found the garrison under arms ; an officer presented 
the national cockade to Payne, and the prettiest woman 
of that town pinned it to his hat. The artillery boom- 
ed on all sides, and the cries of ‘Long live Thomas 
Payne’ rent the air. With risible inconsistency, to 
this Sans-G'uloties and Jacobin all the honors hitherto 
granted only to royalty were enthusiastically paid, and 
were received, as usual, with the blushing modesty and 
humble disclaimer of a ‘friend of the people.’ All 
the fat and lean burghers of the place down to the 
very mendicant at the corner of the street, agglomer. 
ated themselves into a patriotic rabble, and, escorted 
by the whole of the military, conducted Thomas Payne 
to the city hotel, where he was harangued by the 
mayor and city council, as the new representative of 
the French people — and truly, a new sort of represent- 
ative he was, who did not comprehend one word of the 
compliments paid to him by those he represented, and 
who could not return his thanks, except by repeatedly 
placing his hand on his heart and bowing profusely. 
What a farce ! Well, Backbone, as the friend of Payne, 
partook of the ovation, and, in that capacity, had be- 
come and still was a lion in Paris, where I met him at 
every one of our minister’s receptions. To what was 
he indebted for his distinguished position? Was it to 
his merit? No : to an old pair of boots. If that pair 
of boots had not been brought to him instead of his 
own, he would not have cracked the head of the boot- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


383 


black ; and, if be bad not cracked tbe bead of tbe boot- 
black, be would not bave been tbe friend of Tboinas 
Pajne ; and, if not tbe friend of Tbomas Pajne, be 
would bave remained .tbe same insignificant Backbone 
tbat be was before. Was this tbe inexplicable and vagne 
thing we call luck ? Or was it tbe practical joke of 
some miscbievous hobgoblin or elfish buffoon ? But, 
mark tbe sequel. 

One day, onr minister sent for me. I found him 
in bis library with an old lady of great dignity 
and majestic presence, to whom be introduced me, 
saying with a smile : ‘ This lady, with whom I have tbe 
honor of being intimately acquainted, has a proposition 
to make to you. It is of much importance, and I hope 
that it will suit you to accept it.’ I turned to tbe lady, 
whose scrutinizing looks were fixed on me, as if deter- 
mined to read me like a book, and whose communica- 
tion I expected with much curiosity. She beckoned 
me to a chair in front of her, and said with much calm- 
ness of manner and directness of language : 

“I am tbe dowager duchess of Montgolfier. To- 
morrow, at day-break, I am to be arrested, and my 
property is to be confiscated after I am sent to tbe guil- 
lotine. My life I no longer value, but I wish to save 
my property for my grandson, tbe Prince of Blancbe- 
fort, who is my heir and the only representative of my 
family. To save tbat property, I have, by tbe advice 
of my friends, among whom I reckon your ambassador, 
resolved to become an American by marrying one of 
your nationality. From tbe knowledge which I have 
obtained of your character through him, I say to you : 
will you be ray busband-in-law and in name only, be 
it understood ? If you accept, you will live in my 
bouse as tbe ostensible bead of tbe family, as long at 


384 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


least as this reign of terror shall continue, hut perfectly 
free as if not married at all. To one to whom I shall 
owe so much, and who, in the eye of the world, is to oc- 
cupy the position of my husband, it is my duty and 
pleasure to be grateful, and I am determined to donate 
to him by my marriage contract five hundred thousand 
francs. But, no time is to be lost, and the ceremony must 
take place this very day in this very room, where the 
American fiag protects me. Do you accept V 

I was completely stunned, hut, after some hesita- 
tion, I was persuaded to assent to an act which, I was 
assured, would be considered as an immense service to 
the noble lady, and which would he of much advantage 
to me. All being settled, I departed to provide for the 
accomplishment of some necessary formalities. I was 
walking rapidly in the rue Yivienne^ when I met Back- 
bone. I communicated to him what had happened, 
and, to do him justice, I must say that he seemed to be 
rejoiced at my good luck. Perhaps he felt a twinge 
of conscience at having robbed me of my uncle’s for- 
tune, and thought that any self-reproach which he ad- 
dressed to himself, might be softened, if he saw me in 
better circumstances and no longer suffering from the 
consequences of his treachery. We had hardly parted, 
when passing before a house which was in the way of 
construction, a brick, escaping from the hands of a 
mason who was working at the top of the house, laid 
me senseless on the ground. Backbone carried the 
news to the embassy, and, as it was impossible to wait 
for my recovery, and as an American was needed at 
any price within a specific time, my inevitable cousin 
took my place. Thus five hundred thousand francs 
were lost by one man, and gained by another, in conse- 
quence of the fall of a brick.” 


CHAPTEE XXXn. 


END OF THE STORY OP SADFISH AND BACKBONE, OR GOOD 
AND BAD LUCK. — DEATH OF TINTIN CALANDRO. 

After a pause, Sadlish resumed bis storj in these 
words : I studied the civil law in Paris during my 

residence in that city, and, I may say, with a success 
which elicited commendation from the learned profes- 
sor under whose care I had placed myself. When Lou- 
isiana was ceded to the United States, I thought that 
new country would afford me a fine field, and I de- 
parted for its- distant shores. I arrived in Xew Orleans 
in time to see Claiborne’s installation as governor of 
the newly acquired territory, in 1803. I was admitted 
to the bar, and was practising with very encouraging 
results, when Backbone turned up on the banks of the 
Mississippi in quest of adventures and speculations. 
He had lost his French wife, and was a widower with- 
out having been a husband in reality. I would have 
bribed him to go away, if it had been in my power. I 
felt that his presence would be fatal to me, and so it 
happened. A client of mine had bought claims to an 
immense tract of land ; Backbone had purchased the 
adverse ones. It ended in a lawsuit. The whole case 
turned on a single word. The question was, whether 
in a certain phrase of an original deed there was 
the connective, and^ instead of the alternative, or ; 
Backbone had a duly certified copy of the original, 
1 7 ( 385 ) 


386 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


which was believed to be lost, and the word and 
was in it. That made out his case. Several witnesses 
were ready to swear that they had frequently seen the 
original title, and distinctly recollected that it con- 
tained the conjunction instead of and. That testi- 
'jnony, if admitted, would have been decisive in my fa- 
vor. But would it be admitted, and, if admitted for 
what it was worth, would it have the desired effect in 
the face of the duly certified copy of the original ? 
With considerable ability, I think, I had the trial post- 
poned, in the hope of finding the lost document. I was 
indefatigable in my researches, and I discovered at last 
what I had so diligently sought. The alternative or was 
in it, and success was certain. My fortune was made, for 
I had stipulated, as a contingent fee, for one half of the 
claim, if I succeeded. On the other hand, if I failed, 
besides getting nothing for all my labor, I had to pay 
the costs. I had concealed my luck from my client 
and every body else, in order to produce a surprise in 
court. The jury was empanelled and sworn, and my 
adversary opened the case. When the certified copy 
of the deed was presented, I opposed its reception as 
evidence, in as much as the original was in existence 
and in my possession. There was a great sensation, 
which I enjoyed hugely. I drew the instrument slowly 
from my coat pocket, to the blank dismay of the attor- 
ney on the opposite side, and I unfolded it with a sort 
of triumphant solemnity, when, lo ! the phrase with 
the alternative on which I relied was not there. 1 had 
sat up late the preceding night, a drop had fallen from 
a tallow candle on the manuscript, and, after I had re- 
tired to rest, a mouse had nibbled away at the greasy 
spot ; it was impossible to determine what the missing 
phrase was, and whether it contained the conjunction 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


387 


or instead of and. It was mj turn to shake, and not 
without reason. ‘ A capital trick !’ exclaimed my op- 
ponent with an exulting laugh, ‘ hut it will not impose 
on this intelligent jury and the intelligent jury gave 
a verdict against me without leaving their seats. A 
drop of tallow and a mouse had turned the scales of 
justice. 

I had reached the age of forty, and felt the want 
of a companion for the remainder of my life. 1 cast 
my eye on a widow of thirty-five, who, besides other 
attractions, was abundantly supplied with the fiesh- 
pots of Egypt. It followed of course, that Backbone 
did the same. We became rivals. The widow coquet- 
ted with us both for a long time, and so committed 
herself, that, in the opinion of the public, she could 
not do otherwise than marry me, or Backbone. I felt 
therefore certain of the prize ; for the widow had in 
secret informed me of her having decided in my favor, 
but for some reason or other, best known to herself, 
she wished it not to be divulged for some time. This 
I did not much object to, because it was a pleasure to 
me to witness the efforts of Backbone to cut me out, 
as I had the comfortable assurance that they would 
be fruitless. The greater his hopes, the keener would 
be his disappointment in the, end ; and had I not the 
right to indulge in the enjoyment of some revengeful 
feeling against one who had done me so much harm ? 
But, one day, when I was at the feet of the widow, 
giving vent to impassioned utterances of eternal love, 
I suddenly remained with my mouth wide open, with- 
out being able to articulate a sound, or to close my 
gaping lips. She stared at me with amazement, and 
discovered for the first time, that the beautiful teeth 
which she admired so much were false. The fact is. 


388 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


that I sported a full set, an upper and lower one, so 
exquisitely made that it was impossible to detect it, 
without the most minute and persevering observation. 
The artist had surpassed himself ; it was the work of a 
man of genius. But, on this occasion, the springs 
which supported the upper teeth had suddenly got out 
of order, and hence the accident. My widow became 
convulsed with laughter, and I rushed out of her pres- 
ence like a madman. As the adventure would have 
made her ridiculous as well as myself, she did not reveal 
it, but, the next day, she took care to make it known 
that Backbone had always been the choice of her 
heart, and they were soon married. A little gold 
spring had robbed me of a wife. I felt smashed for 
ever — perfectly overwhelmed with the conviction of 
my unavoidable bad luck. 

‘‘ In my despair, I abandoned my profession and New 
Orleans, and T plunged into the far West, where T be- 
came acquainted with all the trappers, and became a 
trapper myself. At the end of three years I had se- 
cured an immense quantity of furs, with which I ex- 
pected to Idealize a fortune in Europe.- I brought them 
to New Orleans in perfect condition and chartered a 
ship. My cargo was soon on board, and I was pre- 
paring to depart with it, when 1 met Backbone, who 
said to me with a grin : ‘ I hear, cousin, that you have 
been speculating in furs. I am going to do the same, 
for it brings me good luck to follow in your tracks.’ 
My stomach rose up to my throat, and, casting on him 
an indignant look, I went away without giving a reply, 
and with gloomy apprehensions. My vessel glided down 
the river with the fairest wind imaginable, but she stuck 
two months on one of the sand-bars at the Balize. At 
last she got loose, but what with tempests and calms. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


389 


what with being put out of her course and having re- 
pairs done in ports whither she was driven by stress of 
weather, she was five months before reaching her des- 
tination. On the day she entered the harbor she was 
bound to, a vessel loaded with furs for Backbone had 
arrived after a very short passage. Both cargoes were 
landed at the same time. Mine, from the delays I have 
mentioned and which had taken place in hot climates, 
had been eaten up by moths ; his was in the best state 
of preservation, and sold proportionately high in conse- 
quence of the destruction of mine. Thus two great 
commercial operations of the same nature, were indeb- 
ted to so little an insect as a moth for their final and 
widely difierent results. Why talk of human foresight 
and skill to secure success ? 

Sick at heart, sick of the world, sick of myself and 
sick of Backbone in particular, I determined to bury 
myself in a rural retreat among cows, mules and ne- 
groes, and I bought a sugar plantation on the bank of 
the Mississippi. It was a superb bargain according to 
the opinion of the best judges. I paid one fourth cash, 
and for the balance I gave my notes at one, two, three 
and four years. Everybody said that those notes would 
be paid out of the crops, and I thought that it was not 
unfair to suppose that everybody must be right. I felt 
therefore somewhat elated. But, when I heard that 
Backbone had discounted my notes, I had the presenti- 
ment of some impending calamity. My crop, however, 
was magnificent, and my neighbors complimented me 
every day on my prospects, when, precisely at the time 
of the highest rise in the river, a crawfish, during the 
night, pierced through iny levee and produced a cre- 
vasse which could not be stopped. I was a ruined man. 
My plantation and negroes were sold at auction, and 


390 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


adjudicated to Backbone for one third of their value. 
Such is my recent mishap, and I had resolved that it 
should be the last. I had saved out of the general wreck 
one thousand dollars which I wished to invest in a tomb, 
and then have done with a burdensome life. I should 
have been in time to buy the desired tomb, had I not 
been deceived by a sudden irregularity of my watch, 
which I had always known before as the best time-keep- 
er that had ever been manufactured. But God’s will be 
done ! The end is in harmony with the whole tenor of 
my life. It could not be otherwise, I suppose, without 
marring some pre-arranged fitness in matters and things, 
which is beyond my own comprehension. But, since there 
are grinding stones, there must be something created to 
be ground. This may account for my fate. Be it as it 
may, I am tired of it. Good-bye, gentlemen ; I am off to 
hang myself.” 

Halloo !” exclaimed Tintin Calandro, “ surely, you 
are not mad enough to do it.” 

“ I am wise enough to do it,” he replied. “ A man, 
whose destinies have successively been shaped and con- 
trolled by a dog, a brickbat, a drop of tallow and a 
mouse, a set of false teeth, a moth, a crawfish and the 
spring of a watch, is justified in putting an end to so 
deplorable and humiliating an existence. He has no 
business to live at all. Therefore I go hence with the 
firm determination to close my ridiculous and lamenta- 
ble career.” 

He walked away a few steps ; then turning round, he 
looked at us with the most rueful countenance, and said 
in a dolorous tone of voice : “ Mind what I tell you, 
gentlemen. Backbone will be in the way as usual, and 
will prevent me from hanging myself, because I de- 
sire it.” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


391 


We saw him, after that, move rapidly toward the 
main gate of the cemetery and step out into the 
street. We had hardly lost sight of him, when a 
loud clamor arose. We ran out to the place whence it 
came, and we found Sadfish dead in the midst of an 
excited crowd. Just as he was crossing the street, a 
pair of iiery horses which had run away, and against 
which the coachman struggled in vain, had come rush- 
ing on with the speed of a whirlwind, notwithstanding 
the weight of the splendid carriage to which they were 
harnessed, and had dashed upon poor Sadfish before he 
could get out of the way. The horses, however, had 
not gone far after the accident, without being stopped, 
and their proprietor, returning to the spot where he 
was aware of having involuntarily injured one of his 
fellow-beings, was alighting out of the carriage, to as- 
certain the condition of the man he had run over. 3^e 
asked who he was, and were told that it was Backbone. 
We were struck with a feeling of awe, and felt as if we 
had witnessed something supernaturaL Backbone had 
his relative put in his carriage, and drove \vith the 
inanimate body to the luxurious home, where, whilst 
living, the unlucky defunct had never set his foot. I 
took care to inform Backbone of the circumstance con- 
cerning the tomb. He seemed to be moved by it, and 
in that tomb he had the body of Sadfish deposited, after 
a decent funeral which he conducted in person. From 
that day he became a dififerent man in his looks, demean- 
or and actions, for he was henceforth observed to be as 
thoughtful and religious as he had been gay and world- 
ly, and as generous to the poor as he had been close-fist- 
ed and selfish. Did he wish to make atonement for 
the past ? As to Tintin and myself, it was gratifying 
to us, who could not but have taken a deep interest in 


392 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


the sad story which we had heard of such uninteiTupted 
bad luck, to know that he who, throughout life, had 
been defeated in all his pursuits and aspirations, had at 
last succeeded, after death, in securing the tomb which 
he had coveted for his resting-place. 

Lent had come, and Tintin Calandro had fasted with 
such rigidity, that he had been reduced to extreme 
weakness, and had become so thin that he was almost 
shadowy. I remonstrated in vain. He not only per- 
severed in his spare diet, hardly sufficient to support 
life, but, notwithstanding his debility, he never would 
give upjiis nightly visits to the cemetery. On Good- 
Friday night, I met him there at his favorite spot ; he 
was holding his violin as if preparing to use it. When 
he saw me he said : This has always been to me a 
very solemn day — the day when our Saviour expired 
for us on the cross ! Only think of it, my friend. The 
Godhead consenting to assume in the human shape the 
agony of all the sufferings and punishments deserved 
and to be deserved for all the past, present and future 
crimes of mankind ! What an accumulation of guilt ! 
An infiniteness of sin, and, in proportion to it, the agony 
of a voluntary expiation ! And the Holy Mother, who 
knew the extent of that agony which divinity alone 
could inflict upon itself, and could be strong enough to 
bear, she stood by and witnessed it ! What must she 
also have suffered ! Listen : I have composed a stabat 
mater doloTOsa^ 

He began to play. How long it continued I cannot 
tell, for the prodigious performance had soon held my 
senses captive and thrown me into a trance. There 
never had been, nor ever will be, I think, such music 
heard on earth. Tintin Calandro surpassed himself on 
this occasion, and really ceased to be human for me. 


FERNANDO DE LEM08. 


393 


I fancied him to be a musician from the celestial spheres. 
By the spell he wielded I was transported to Judea, on 
Mount Calvary, and the whole scene of the crucifixion, 
in its minute details, appeared to me with all the awful 
distinctness of reality. I did not imagine — I saw. Such 
was the vividness of my impressions, that I remained 
absorbed in them a long time after the music had ceased. 
I was brought back to myself by Tintin’s touch on my 
shoulder. “ It is time to go,” he said. I walked with 
him, as usual, to his dwelling, and, on my bidding him 
farewell, he requested me to call on him on the next 
day at twelve o’clock, to receive some communication 
which he wished to make, for he felt that his end was 
at hand. I begged him to select another hour, because, 
at the one he had fixed, I had another engagement — 
which was, to meet the newly-elected principal of the 
College of Orleans, a distinguished exile from Europe, 
who, it was thought, would breathe a more vigorous life 
into that institution, which had fallen into a state of decay. 

“ Who is he inquired Tintin Calandro. 

The celebrated and learned Lakanal,” I replied. 

Tintin gave a piercing shriek, as if he had been 
struck to the heart by a dagger. ^^What!” he ex- 
claimed with the wildness of returning insanity. “ La- 
kanal! the member of the National Convention of 
France, the friend of Couthon, St. Just, and Kobes- 
pierre ! Lakanal the regicide, the murderer and spolia- 
tor of nobility. He, to breathe life into any thing, he, 
the destroyer! Ha! ha! ha! When did Satan create 
aught but evil % I cannot but laugh when I think of 
it. He, Lakanal, revive the College of Orleans! A. 
good joke, truly, by Beelzebub his patron ! I tell you, 
my friend, the College of Orleans is dead. Never shall 
it recover from the blight brought to its walls by that 
17 ^ 


394 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


accursed man. Where he shall pass, the grass itself is 
doomed to wither, and nothing shall grow there any 
more. Joseph Lakanal, the apostate priest, the bloody 
Jacobin, permitted to be the parental guide and the ex- 
ample of the youths of Louisiana ! No, no, it shall not 
be. Mind me, and remember my words. Before you 
die, no vestige shall remain of that college where he is 
now installed. Hardly a brick shall be left to show 
where the buildings stood, and posterity shall be igno- 
rant of the spot, where the first educational establish- 
ment of Louisiana once existed with honor. Lakanal 
the atheist ! Oh ! he shall not triumph here as he once 
did on the banks of the Seine. He shall soon depart, 
cursing for his want of success the people who welcomed 
him, instead of attributing it to his own wicked self. 

0 the wretch ! On the spot where he now blasphemes 
Heaven in secret, a church shall yet erect its cross- 
adorned tower, the shadow of which will suflSce to re- 
deem and purify the now polluted ground.” 

Whilst he thus spoke, he kept moving restlessly 
about his room, sobbing in anguish and wringing his 
hands. Suddenly he fell on his knees, uttering this 
prayer : Mayest Thou, O God, in Thy infinite mercy, 
spare Thy servant the misery of again breathing any 
longer in the same atmosphere, with one who has re- 
pudiated Thy name and deserted Thy altars !” 

All this scene had taken place in a much shorter 
time than it has taken me to relate it. The efiect which 

1 had produced by mentioning the name of Lakanal, 
had been to me a painful surprise. As soon as I had 
recovered from the shock I had received, I attempted 
to lift up Tintin Calandro, who appeared to have swoon, 
ed whilst kneeling, with his head resting on one side 
of his bed. He was dead. 


CHAPTEE XXXm. 


WHAT WAS THE VEILED PORTRAIT BEQUEATHED BY TINTIN 
CALANDRO TO FERNAIVDO. — THE PRINCESS OF LAMB ABLE, 
AND JOSEPH LAKANAL, THE REGICIDE, AND THE LAST PRIN- 
CIPAL OF THE COLLEGE OF ORLEANS. 

Tinttn Calandeo had named me his testamentary 
executor, and very little I found to execute. He had only 
left one thousand dollars, one half of which, with his 
scanty furniture, was to go to Zabet, his faithful nurse 
and housekeeper ; the other half was destined for funeral 
expenses and the purchase of a tomb. To me he had 
bequeathed his violin and the veiled picture that had 
always excited my curiosity. There is in the St. Louis 
cemetery a modest monument, on the slab of which 
there is no name indicating who reposes there. It bears 
only this inscription : At home at last.” Above that 
inscription there is engraved a cross, at the foot of 
which there is represented an angel, with one hand 
holding a broken violin, and with the other pointing to 
heaven — tlie meaning of which is, that thither had 
gone the melody of the instrument and the soul of its 
proprietor. This is Tintin Calandro’s tomb, in a corner 
of the cemetery, as hidden as possible from the public 
eye, according to his instructions. After having per- 
formed all the duties which the death of my late friend 

(m) 


396 


F-ERiVANDO DE LEMOS. 


liad imposed upon me, I went to take possession of my 
legacy. Witli a hand somewhat trembling with excite- 
ment, and with the feelings of one ex]Decting some 
strange revelation, I drew the veil from the picture, and 
I started back when I recognized the portrait of the un- 
fortunate princess of Lamballe, which I instantly knew ; 
foi’, when in France, I had frequently gazed with ad- 
miration and sympathetic sadness, in the gallery of 
paintings of the duke of Brissac, at the lovely and 
never-to-be-forgotten features of the celebrated friend 
of Marie Antoinette. 

Who was the princess of Lamballe, may ask one 
little acquainted with French history. To answer that 
question, I will state that the princess of Lamballe 
was of the illustrious house of Savoy, the house of 
Yictor Emmanuel, now king of Italy. She had married 
Louis Alexander Joseph Stanislas of Bourbon Pen- 
thievre, prince of Lamballe, and a member of the 
royal family of France. Her virtues, her beauty, the 
unalterable sweetness of her temper won the hearts of 
all those who approached her, but did not secure the 
fidelity of her young husband exposed to the tempta- 
tions of a corrupt court. She still continued to love 
passionately him whose conduct grieved her heart. She 
bore it all, however, with dignified resignation and a 
prudent abstention from useless reproaches, hoping that 
time and her unchangeable love would bring back to 
her arms her erring husband. That hope was sadly 
blasted. The prince of Lamballe, in the bloom of 
youth, died of a lingering disease probably produced by 
his excesses. He had wasted away his life and constitu- 
tion. The young widow was tempted again into matri- 
mony by the most seductive ofiers, but she had 
firmly resolved to remain single, and she kept her reso- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


397 


lution. Respected by the family into wbicb she had 
entered and by all her household, cherished by her 
father-in-law, the duke of Penthievre, who was sur- 
named the “ virtuous duke,” she soon obtained the 
tender affection of Marie Antoinette, the brilliant queen 
of France, for whom she, in her turn, conceived an at- 
tachment of which she never ceased until death to give 
the most signal proofs. Appointed superintendent of 
the queen’s household, the princess of Lamballe was 
cited as one of the brightest ornaments of the court of 
France, when the revolution broke out. In the begin- 
ning of June, 1791, the court had returned to the design, 
previously entertained, of flying secretly from the vol- 
cano which threatened them with its eruptions. The 
princess of Lamballe was not to accompany the queen, 
who did not think it prudent to have a numerous suite ; 
but she was, in a different direction, to make her way 
to a foreign country, from which she might join the 
royal family wherever they might be. In the evening 
of the 10th of June, the queen informed her of her 
intended departure that very night, which, however, 
was postponed until the 21st. It is well known how 
the flight of the king and of Marie Antoinette was in- 
teiTupted at Yarennes. The princess of Lamballe de- 
parted also on the 21st of June, at one o’clock in the 
morning, and reached Dieppe on the coast of Hor- 
mandy, from which she sailed and safely landed in 
England. Thus she had escaped from all dangers, after 
havins: saved sufficient means to live with comfort in 
the land which had given her hospitality. Her friends 
implored her no longer to expose her life ; but her 
heart drew her fatally back, to unite herself to the un- 
fortunate princess to whom she had devoted her life. 
As soon as she learned that Louis XYI, had accepted 


398 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


the constitution of 1790, losing all hopes of meeting the 
queen in foreign parts, the princess of Lamballe, against 
the earnest remonstrances of all her fi’iends, and fully 
aware of all the hazards to which she would expose her- 
self, resolved to brave them all and to share the fate of her 
royal friend, whatever it might be. She went back to 
Paris, where she had the consolation of no longer beings 
separated from the queen, until the revolutionary carni- 
val of the month of August, 1792. After the famous 
day of the 10th of that month, she followed the daugh- 
ter of the Caesars to the Temple^ from which she was, 
however, soon removed, to be incarcerated in the prison 
of La Force. Jacobin ferocity would not permit the 
two friends to have the satisfaction of remaining 
together, when the storm of an unparalleled adversity 
was sweeping over them. But that separation on earth 
was not to last long. The horrible days of September 
were brooding in the womb of that revolution, which 
had been inaugurated to re-establish the dignity and the 
rights of man, and universal fraternity and love. 

On the 3d of that month, in the morning, when a 
stream of blood was running at the gate of her prison, 
she was informed that she was to be transferred to the 
prison of the Abbaye.” Slie begged to remain where 
she was ; but a national guard approached her bed and 
ordered her to rise, announcing to her that her life de- 
pended on her obedience. The national guard knew 
better. It was a lie, to draw the victim with more ease 
to the shambles. Inside and outside of the prison 
there was a fnghtful tumult. The chamber of the 
princess, situated in the quarters appropriated to the 
female prisoners, was far from the wickets, and it is 
probable that she did not hear the groans of the vic- 
tims who were slaughtered outside. But there was 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


399 


consternation on the face of every prisoner, and the 
sullen looks, with the atrocious expressions, of the 
jailors, presaged hut too plainly the fate which awaited 
her. When she was dressed, she called the man who 
had signified to her to get up, took his arm and allowed 
herself to be conducted to the fatal wicket. There she 
found herself in the presence of a set of monsters call-* 
ing themselves judges, and of another set who assumed 
to be the ministerial otficers of the court. They were 
all steeped in blood and smelling of carnage, with a 
dash of liquor. Questions of an infamous nature con- 
cerning the queen were put to her. ‘‘ I have nothing 
to answer,” she said. I neither understand nor wish 
to understand you. I am ready to die. A little sooner, 
or a little later, it matters not.” 

Ah ! she refuses to answer,” exclaimed the hang- 
man of a judge who presided that tribunal of murder. 
“ To the AhhayeP 

This word was a sentence. At the Ahhaye^ the word 
was : ‘‘ to La ForceL It meant the same thing : 
death. It was a cunning device to entrap the prisoners 
into coming out with more readiness, in the persuasion 
that they were merely to be transferred to another 
place of detention. Otherwise, there might have been 
resistance. That resistance might have given trouble, 
and produced a loss of time which the expeditious and 
economical butchers wished to save. Violently dragged 
outside of the wickets, the princess of Lamballe had 
hardly gone over the sill of the gate, when she received 
a sabre blow on the back of the neck. She would 
have been felled to the ground by it, had she not been 
supported by the men who had hold of her, and who 
compelled her to continue her tottering walk over a 
carpet of (Corpses and blood, until she reached a spot 


400 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


where both corpses and blood were satisfactorily and 
conveniently thick. On that heap of still warm and 
palpitating human beings she was permitted to fall, 
where she could be and was slaughtered with comfort- 
able ease on the part of the assassins. Her body was 
outraged, her head separated from it, her breast ripped 
up and her heart taken out. This was necessary, per- 
haps, to obtain some appropriate and pure liquid for 
the baptism of the Age of Reason,” just born out of 
the amours of the Goddess of Liberty with the Demon 
of Atheism. This was done by the apostles and mis- 
sionaries of those who had discovered the “ rights of 
man,” among which is the sacred one of proclaiming 
his own perfectibility, and of acknowledging no God 
but himself. These new-fashioned saints, after having 
assassinated the Princess of Lamballe, formed them- 
selves into a procession of men and women, preceded 
by fifes and drums. Carrying the head of that princess 
stuck on a long pike, they paraded through the streets 
of Paris, passed several times before the Hotel de Tou- 
louse^ where she used to reside, traversed the Palais 
Poyal^ and at last carried that hideous trophy to the 
“ Temjple^'’ under the windows of the queen, where 
they howled and shouted for her, calling on the ‘‘ Aus- 
trian woman,” with epithets which would have made 
the fish-market blusli, to come and kiss her friend. I 
doubted not that Tintin Calandro had witnessed these 
horrors, that he had been crazed by them, and that in 
the mind of the poor maniac a fearful responsibility 
had attached to Lackaiial ; and I resolved, if possible, 
to gratify my curiosity in that respect. As Tintin had 
predicted, the College of Orleans withered and perished 
in the hands of Lakanal. It was the last of it. That 
personage, with whom I contrived to become well ac- 


FERNAXDO DE^ LEMOS. 401 

qaainted, was a soar and discontented man, of whose 
historical record I shall now give a short synopsis. 

Joseph Lakanal, before the revolution, was a priest 
and a professor of helles-lettres. In 1791, the revolution 
which was to change so many things being fairly under 
way, and running twenty knots per hour, with the gen- 
ius of progress at the helm and a full crew of the phil- 
osophic sailors of reform in the riggings, he was appointed 

Constitutional Yicar-General,” a sort of ecclesiastical 
non-descript — pretending to derive its powers from the 
Church and from the State — an amphibious monster — 
a strange compound, clinging with its tail to earth and 
aspiring to thrust its horned head into heaven. In 1792, 
there was evident progress in him as well as in France, 
for he entirely secularized himself and became the re- 
presentative of the department of Arri^ge in the Na- 
tional Convention, in which he voted for the death of 
Louis XYI, without appeal to the people and without 
reprieve. In March, 1795, he executed the mission of 
stripping the Chateau de Chantilly belonging to the 
prince of Conde, of all the gold, silver, copper and iron 
which it contained. The result of the spoliation was 
eighteen thousand 'ounces of gold and silver, which he 
deposited in the public treasury. It was reported that 
he himself was greatly benefited by the operation, but 
to what extent it is not known. He also seized all the 
archives and papers of that illustrious house, and put 
them in the possession of the government. Whilst a 
member of the National Convention, he was one of the 
Committee of Public Education, and, as such, made 
innumerable reports on the subject. It was the inces- 
sant fiow of an irrepressible pedagogic diarrhea. He 
was, however, benefited by it, because to his fecundity 
on that occasion, and to his labors on that popular 


402 FEJ^NANDO DE LEMOS. 

theme, lie was indebted for his subsequently becoming 
a member of the Institute. On the 1st of January, 
1793, in a paroxysm of republican zeal, he had caused 
the Convention to decree that new appellations which 
he indicated, should be given to all the cities and towns 
of France whose names were in the slightest degree 
connected with royalty. This foolish measure was not 
carried into execution. On the 17th of April, 1794, he 
had^ proposed to raise a national column in commemo- 
ration of the patriots who had perished on the 10th of 
August, 1792. On that memorable day, one hundred 
thousand heroes had attacked the king’s palace, which 
was protected by two hundred Swiss, wlio defended 
themselves to the last during three hours against such 
frightful odds. What was more sensible and honorable 
on the part of Lakanal, was his being instrumental in 
obtaining the establishment of primary and central 
schools. On the 7th of October, 1793, he spoke with 
vehemence against those “ sections of Paris ” which 
had risen against the National Convention. He pro- 
posed that they should be disarmed, and that all such 
persons as did not reside in Paris before the year 1789, 
be expelled from that city. Pobespierre, however, and 
other brothers of the freemasonry of Jacobinism, thought 
that the ex-priest and newly-dubbed apostle of univer- 
sal fraternity was riding his hobby too hard, and re- 
jected the measure which he had advocated. 

Lakanal was one of the council of Five Hundred 
until the 20th of May, 1797. Two years afterward, 
he was one of the commissaries of the executive de- 
partment. But he was soon dismissed from office by 
the First Consul, on account of his having openly de- 
clared himsolf against the revolution of the 18th Bru- 
maire. He became, however, one of the superiors of 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


403 


the Bonaparte Ljceuni, and exercised those functions 
until 1809. He was a professor of history and of an- 
cient literature at the Institute, at the time of the res- 
toration of the Bourbons in 1814, but he ceased to be 
a member of that learned body in 1816. The royal 
government, thinking itself firmly seated, would no 
longer tolerate in such a position one of the assassins of 
Louis XYI. Lakanal then came to the United States, 
and established himself on a farm which he purchased 
on the bank of the Ohio. From that rural retreat he 
was induced to come out, and take charge of the Col- 
lege of Orleans, of which he was the last principal. 
He had been intimate with Tintin Calandro in France, 
and with Aubert Dubayet, a native of Louisiana, who, 
after having taken a part in our struggle for independ- 
ence against Great Britain, had figured conspicuously 
in the French revolution, and had died, when still in the 
meridian of life, after having risen to be a member of 
the National Convention, lieutenant-general, command- 
er-in-chief of a French army, minister of war, and am- 
bassador at Constantinople. I loved to hear him talk 
of those two men, in whose memory I took a special 
interest, and of the gigantic drama in which he had 
been an actor. He seemed to speak frankly, freely, and 
even with pleasure of that grand historical past in which 
he had had his share. Although I felt no sympathy for 
him, and although I must confess that I rather enter- 
tained the reverse of such a feeling, yet I sedulously 
cultivated a close and frequent intercourse with him, on 
account of the varied information and thrilling narra- 
tives which I elicited from him, but which, according 
to a promise which he exacted from me, I was not per- 
mitted to make public in any form or shape, until after 
his death. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 


FERNANDO DE DEMOS RETURNS TO NEW ORLEANS, AFTER 

THE WAR OF SECESSION. — THE PORTICO OF THE ST. 

CHARLES HOTEL. 

During the whole of the secession war, I was within 
the lines of the Southern Confederacy. Only some 
time after its entire collapse did I return to Xew 
Orleans, with a broken fortune and a broken heart. I 
had loaned large sums to planters and merchants. They 
were all ruined, and, in most cases, I was not paid one 
cent in the dollar. But it is singular, and this shows 
the wonderful resources of the country, that several of 
those poor men continued to live as luxuriously as they 
had done before they were ruined. Others, by the 
most fortunate circumstance, happened to have wives 
who, although by their marriage contract they had 
brought but a beggarly account of empty boxes, turned 
out in the end to be rich in their own right. It is true 
the time had been in Louisiana, under the benighted 
administration of France and Spain, notwithstanding 
the narrowness of intellect and the moral obliquity 
then existing among the colonists, in consequence of 
the moth-eaten and worn-out principles and usages then 
prevailing, when a wife would have applied a portion 
of her large income to the gradual extinction of her 
husband’s debts, from her love to him and respect for 
his character, and in order to save her children from 
( 404 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


405 


the stigma of having a bankrupt for a father. Sons 
had been known as being so foolish as to work hard 
until they had redeemed every parental obligation. 
Even in later times, I have known one, a baron’s son, 
and this perhaps accounts for his antiquated behavior, 
who was absolutely such a goose as to becoipe an auc- 
tioneer, and who, ascending a public stand at Hewlett’s 
Exchange, shouted himself almost into a pulmonary 
disease until he had paid every cent his father owed. 
But, now-a-days, such an occurrence would he an in- 
credible instance of the tenacity with which the be- 
queathed rust of the dark ages still clings to certain 
human idiosyncracies, which are so obtuse as not to 
understand and accept the modern doctrine, that a man 
is no more responsible for his father’s debts than for his 
crimes, and that it is perfectly indifferent to his suc- 
cess in life and to his social or domestic respectability, 
that he should know who his father was, or whether he 
ever had any father at all. 

Among those who were largely indebted to me, there 
were some to whom I had rendered personal services 
of some importance. They had forgotten all their ob- 
ligations, moral and legal, and I did not attempt to 
refresh their memory. I knew that it would be useless ; 
I knew that, if by a fiction of the law their purses 
were empty, it was no fiction of nature that their hearts 
were hare of all gratitude. It was but too. evident and 
sad a reality. Some had become near-sighted, and did 
not see me when 1 passed them in the street. It was 
a mere physical infirmity, of course. Others, when ac- 
cidentally thrown into contact with me, apologized for 
not having recognized me sooner. Four years of ab- 
sence and my many trials had changed me so much ! 
It follows that I was bound to feel that it was my fault 


406 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


rather than theirs, and that their apologizing was very 
kind. All this was quite natural, and easily understood 
hy me. Hence I could not entertain any resentment. 
At times, I was even amused at the distant and almost 
imperceptible nod of recognition which some addressed 
to me, as with stiff and erect heads they strutted on 
the side-walks. It was truly ludicrous, considering who 
they were. Could those creatures really imagine, that 
it was within the range of possible things, that I should 
ask them for any favor ? I survived all this, however, 
without much effort, but what affected me seriously 
was the utter demoralization which met my eves on. all 
sides. Four years had produced more corruption in my 
native land than centuries had ever done before in any 
country ; and, what was more appalling, all moral sense 
had so completely departed from the community, that 
hardly any one seemed able to discriminate between 
right and wrong, and that what formerly would have 
excited indignation was now looked upon as a matter 
of course. It was a mere ‘‘ business transaction,” and 
not a penitentiary offence. “ Every body does it,” was 
a plea in bar to every reproach. After all, the best 
thing a wise man can do, is to philosophically accept 
circumstaiKjes as they are. That is what I did. With- 
out declaiming against the new society among which I 
was placed, I went quietly to work, and tried to come 
to some settlement with such of my debtors as might 
be disposed to give a penny for a pound, on condition 
of a complete discharge. 

There was one individual, however, from whom I ex- 
pected better things. He was still very rich, a bachelor, 
and a man of few wants. He had been very generous 
to the Confederates, or so-called rebels, and had been a 
Confederate himself, as long as there liad been hopes 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


407 


of their success, aud had always enjoyed the reputation 
of being an honest man. His name was Adolphus 
Eelmont, and he was endorser on one of the promissory 
notes which I owned. During the war and my absence 
from Hew Orleans, a notary had demanded payment. 
The reply had been : “If you protest this note, I will 
deposit the amount of it into the hands of the Federal 
general who commands here, because I am a loyal 
citizen, and Fernando de Lemos is a rebel.” The no- 
tary had hastily retired, under the apprehension of 
being denounced as the agent of a rebel, and of being 
as such sent to Ship Island, or some other equally ob- 
jectionable place of involuntary residence. On my 
return to Hew Orleans after the restoration of peace 
and fraternity among the contending parties, I called 
on my opulent debtor, who, after the exhibition of a 
rugged temper, and some rough and lame explanation 
of the language he had addressed to the notary con- 
cerning me, finally promised to pay after a certain 
epoch and on a certain contingency. At the time fixed 
for payment and on the happening, of the stipulated 
contingency, he denied having made the alleged prom- 
ise, took a judicial oath to that effect, and, availing 
himself of the non-fulfillment of those very formalities 
which he had prevented by his threats from being ac- 
complished, drew me into a law-suit which F was com- 
pelled to institute against him. One day, the following 
dialogue occurred between one of Belmont’s friends 
aud myself : 

“ Well,” said he to me, “how goes on your suit 

“ Still hung up,” was the reply, “ but should I lose it, 
your friend will lose more than I shall.” 

“How is that?” 

“ How ? I will meet your inquiry by a few short 


408 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


questions, and please to answer me laconically and to 
the point. Is Belmont morally bound to pay me V’ 
Yes.” 

‘‘ Is he able 

‘‘Yes.” 

“ If you were in his place, and under the circum- 
stances which you know, would you do honor to your 
signature 

“ Yes.” 

“ Then ask me no more what I mean when I say 
that Belmont, should he defeat me through technicali 
ties, would lose more than I shall.” 

“ Oh ! my dear Fernando,” continued he to say, 
“ you are unjust to Belmont. He has very little brain, 
much obstinacy, and misunderstands the case.” 

“ Yery well,” I replied ; “ I stand corrected, and will 
in future remember the new doctrine : that those who 
violate moral obligations are not to be deemed dishonest 
and disgraced, because they only ‘misunderstand the 
case.’ I am glad to learn that there are no longer any 
evil-doers in this, world, but only ignorant beings who 
have ‘ misunderstood the case,’ and that there soon will 
be a general jail delivery. After such a philanthropic 
and gratifying tinale, let us pass to another subject. 
What has become of the family of our common friend, 
William Dabney, who died on the battle-field when in 
the Confederate army ?” 

The information which I received in answer to my 
interrogatory is embodied in the following narrative : 

It was on the 15th of December, 1865. There had 
been a heavy shower followed by a sharp wind from the 
north, and the sun at its meridian shone gloriously, as 
it loves to do, on the Crescent city, more commonly and 
generally known thronghoiit the world under the name 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


409 


of 'New Orleans. A young man, apparently twenty 
years of age, was walking rapidly in Common street 
from Carondelet to St. Charles street. As he was ap- 
proaching the corner of the latter crowded thoroughfare, 
he unluckily put his foot on a loose brick, wliich belong- 
ed to the uneven and rather worn-out sidewalk. A 
spout of liquid mud, occasioned by the unguarded pres- 
sure, rose up perpendicularly, and fell back on the boot 
which so prettily fitted his small and w'ell-shaped foot. 
An exclamation of disgust escaped from his lips, which, 
although so youthful and hardly shaded by a nascent 
moustache, indicated extreme decision of character. 
The proprietor of the soiled boot Avalked with increased 
rapidity toward the St. Charles Hotel. When he ar- 
rived at its massive portico, he threw himself on a rick- 
ety chair, and, leaning back against the granite walls, 
placed his foot on one of those stools which are used by 
those public characters who are engaged in the com- 
mendable occupation of cleaning shoes. The youth who 
now claims our attention was dressed with remarkable 
elegance. He had that peculiar air which almost speaks 
these words : ‘ I am lately from Paris, and I am besides a 
thorough gentleman.’ The fact is, that he had just re- 
turned from that city, ’whither he had been sent as a 
bearer of dispatches from the Confederate Government, 
a little before the surrender of General Lee. Two la- 
dies, who, at that moment, were passing by, could not 
refrain from permitting the look which they cast on him, 
to linger with ill-disguised interest on his delicately 
chiseled features. 

‘‘ A handsome youth truly,” whispered one to the 
other in English ; “ a foreigner, no doubt.” 

“ Oh ! no,” replied the other in the same language, 
but with a slightly French accent, he is a Creole. 

18 


410 


FEI^NAiVDO DE LEMOS. 


No mistaking tliat ; trust the eje of a native like my- 
self.” 

In the meantime, a little boy who claimed owner- 
ship of the chair and stool, had taken hold of the foot 
of his new customer, and was lustily polishing the 
leather which had been so lately stained. The task 
was almost done, when a young man who seemed to 
be sauntering leisurely and meditating on the smoke of 
his Havana cigar, said to the one who was seated and 
whom we have already described : Good morning, 

Gabriel, I hope that your father. General B , is 

well,” and, without waiting for the answer, passed on. 
These words had hardly been uttered, when the boy 
who was cleaning the boots of Gabriel and who was 
scarcely ten years old, looked up with astonishment and 
with the keenest interest full in the face of his cus- 
tomer, and, again bending his head, resumed his 
work. Two or three strokes of his brush finished it. 
Gabriel was just rising and casting a satisfied glance 
at his boots, when they were unexpectedly tarnished 
by what looked like a few big drops of rain, but what 
in reality were tears gushing from the eyes of the child, 
whose head remained hung, down as if in sorrow. ‘‘ By 
heaven, boy,” exclaimed Gabriel, you weep, I be- 
lieve.” The boy gave no answer, and his head 
drooped lower on his breast. “ Child,” said Gabriel in 
a soothing tone and bending toward him, “ what ails 
you ? Can I relieve you ?” These gentle words of 
sympathy went, it seems, to the heart of the little suf- 
ferer, for he raised his head and replied : 

Your name, sir, put me in mind of Shiloh. I was 
only thinking of my father who was killed there, of 
my poor sister Jane who is dying, and of my broken- 
hearted mother.” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


411 


“ Shiloh, Shiloh !” repeated Gabriel. Take this 
dollar, my lad, instead of a dime. You may want it 
for your family.’’ 

“ 'No, no,” replied the boy, wiping his tears, “ it is 
only a dime you owe me. I am very thankful for your 
kindness. I receive no alms from any body, and much 
less from you. It would displease mother.” 

“ That is just like him, sir, he is so proud !” This 
remark came from a juvenile boot-black, who stood by, 
observing and noticing what I have related, whilst 
with one hand he upheld his tattered breeches, and 
with the other flourished his brush over his head, as a 
signal for those who might need it. Willie,” continued 
he, “ take the gentleman’s dollar, thank your stars for it, 
and treat me to a drink.” 

ITot minding the interruption, Gabriel said to 
Willie : “ It is not intended as an alms, it is a present.” 

“ Pardon me, sir, I cannot take it,” insisted the 
child. “ Mother would scold me for it. But she will 
be so glad, when I tell her that I have seen the son of 
General B and talked to him.” 

At this moment, a Kttle girl came up in breathless 
haste, as if she had run a long distance, and cried out 
to Willie as she approached : Brother, come home, 
sister Jane has just fainted, mother is distracted, and 
sends for you.” The boy seized his brushes and his 
box of blacking, and departed at full speed, forgetful 
of the dime to which he was entitled and not giving 
time to Gabriel to hand it to him, instead of the prof- 
fered and rejected dollar. The other urchin of whom 
I spoke before, came close to Gabriel with a knowing 
look and a grin, and said to him : If you give me the 
dime you intended for Willie, I’ll tell you a secret.” 
The dime was given. Stranger,” continued the prom- 


412 


FEJ^NANDO DE LEMOS. 


ising youth, ‘‘ that fellow Willie, you see, somehow or 
other, is better educated than we are, and thinks him- 
self above us that work with him here, because the 
talk is that his father was a gentleman, and his mother 
is a lady. But, with all that, his folks are as poor as 
Job and always sick, and he is ashamed of people 
knowing it, and won’t tell where he lives.” 

Gabriel looked round, as if be had desired to see 
again the boy who had left him so abruptly. Stranger,” 
continued the other boy with characteristic pertinacity, 
and with a nasal tone which he had not yet lost, and 
which indicated that he was a recent importation from 
a well-known clime where there is a hereditary dispo- 
sition to speak through the nose, “ why do you keep 
staring so ?” and, chuckling over his own smartness, he 
added : “ I’ll tell you another secret for another of 
Uncle Sam’s paper dimes, and, if you like to trade in 
that line, I’ll swap with you as many secrets as you 
want for a dime apiece. It is cheap, ain’t it ? I am 
not so green as Willie Dabney. He ran away from a 
dime ; I’ll make dimes run after me.” 

Gabriel turned his back on this precocious trader, 
and, after a little hesitation, crossed the street, and 
went up to a man who was looking complacently at 
some articles artistically displayed at a tailor’s window, 
and whom the badge of a copper-plate on the breast 
designated as a police officer. 

Sir,” said he to the guardian of the public peace, 
did you, perchance, notice that boy who ran away so 
hastily just now in company with a little girl ?” 

“ Yes, I know him by sight. He is a St. Charles 
boot-black.” 

“Well, sir, I feel some interest in that child, and I 
should like to discover where he lives. Can yon do 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


413 


that for me? I will remunerate you for the informa- 
tion. My name is Gabriel B ; here is my ad- 

dress.” 

The officer bowed a respectful assent, and took the 
card V hich was tendered to him. 


CHAPTER XXXy. 


THE DA:BNET family. — THE APPARlTIOIf. 

Two days after, at ten o’clock in the morning, Ga- 
briel was standing in front of Xo. 350, in a street which 
shall be nameless. That number was affixed to the lin- 
tel of a small wooden gate, opening into a lot of ground 
fenced on the street with dingy-looking pickets, which, 
judging from the tint impressed upon them by time 
and from their appearance of long dilapidation, must 
be supposed to have attained a ripe old age. In the 
back part of the lot, at a distance of a hundred feet 
from the street, squatted a very humble tenement 
which seemed to be crushed under the weight of years, 
and composed of three rooms following one ano-ther in 
a row, along side of which ran a gallery with many of 
its balusters broken, or missing. It could not claim a 
higher rank than that of an octogenarian shanty, on the 
roof of which a dense green moss had spread itself like 
a carpet. It was evident that no paint had ever been 
used to modify and embellish the original complexion 
of this primitive structure, which probably had been 
erected in the days of Spanish domination. A grayish 
smoke issued spasmodically from the only chimney 
which could be seen, and which seemed to have hai’dly 
strength to raise its weather-beaten head above the rot- 
ten shingles from which it struggled to emerge. Some 
twenty feet behind this hut there was a shed, under 

( 414 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


415 


Which were a rusty cooking-stove and a few wash-tubs. 
The whole space which intervened between the street 
and these humble dwellings was bleak and desolate. 
It vras nothing but a monotonous patch of parched up 
grass. A line of planks, much worn out by use and 
half-buried in the mud, formed a path which led from 
the street gate to this abode qf indigence. Gabriel had 
walked to within a few feet of its front door, when 
there came out a little girl, whom he instantly recog- 
nized as being the one who, two days before, had come 
for her brother at the portico of the St. Charles Hotel. 
He well remembered that cherub face flushed at the 
time by unusual excitement, and those long auburn 
locks which streamed back from her brow as she sped 
with her small shoeless feet on the hard pavement. His 
was not the heart to have forgotten the thick heavy 
breathing which parted those rosy lips, when, on ac- 
count of the haste with which she had run, she could 
hardly gasp to her brother Willie that he was wanted 
at' home by the sick and suffering. The little girl 
gazed wonderingly at the stranger. 

‘‘ Is Mrs. Dabney at home?” said Gabriel. 

“ Mamma has gone out to get some work,” answered 
the softest voice that ever greeted, human ears. Wil- 
lie is at the St. Charles, blackening boots, and sister 
Jane, who is sick, is fast asleep.” 

Will your mother be out long ?” he inquired. 

Oh ! no, she is never out long.” 

Could I not then wait for her coming ?” he asked. 
‘‘ I have some work to bespeak of her.” 

God forgive him for this unpremeditated deviation 
from truth ! It is to be hoped that it was one of those 
lies which the wing of the angel of mercy brushes 
away, before it is registered in the record book of de- 


416 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


linqnencles. “ Walk in, sir,” said the little girl open- 
ing the door, and Gabriel entered a room of the most 
scrnpuloTis neatness, but in which there were but three 
straw-bottomed chairs and a pine-wood table on which 
stood a lamp and a work-basket. The child, with 
inimitable youthful grace and matronly gravity, took 
him by the hand, and leading him to one of the chairs, 
courtesied as she" offered it to him. He was hardly 
seated, when an object appended to the wall above the 
mantel-piece of the fire-place attracted his attention. 

It was a lithographic portrait of General B in a 

rough frame of oak placed in the centre of a circle of 
immortelles entwined with black crape. Below the 
portrait there was a crucifix, and, hanging by a black 
ribbon to the crucifix, there was a medallion as large 
as the palm of a woman’s hand, representing the Virgin 
Mary weeping at the foot of the cross. It was an ob- 
ject of art and beautifully executed, which contrasted 
with the coarse appearance of the apartment. The child 
noticed the interest with which Gabriel looked at the 
portrait and its appendages. Pointing at it, she said : 
‘‘ Do you know him ?” A slight affirmative inclination 
of the head was the answer. “ Do you love him ?” she 
continued. Gabriel smiled and nodded assent. “ You 
are a confederate then ?” Another nod. Papa was 
one, and he lives no more.” An expression of sadness 
darkened her lovely features as it flitted over them like 
a light cloud, and she hung down her head, but, soon 
raising it, and fixing her large beautiful blue eyes on 
Gabriel, she said : ‘‘ When mamma is not nursing sis- 
ter, she sits by that table, and she works and she cries, 
and cries and works the live-long day, and she kneels 
there before the crucifix, and she prays, and makes me 
pray too, for the soul of papa.” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


417 


There was something so irresistibly touching in the 
tones of her voice, that the eyes of Gabriel became 
moist as he looked with tenderness at his infantine com- 
panion. She was quick in perceiving it with the in- 
stinctive intuition of her age, and, becoming garrulous 
on a subject which had evidently been kept dear to her 
heart, and had remained vivid in her imagination, she 
continued to prattle with increasing childish confidence, 
as she gazed at the sympathizing face which seemed to 
woo her to unreserved familiarity. I will show you,” 
she said, how mamma makes me pray,” and, sliding 
from the chair to which she had climbed, she knelt be- 
fore the crucifix, and, after crossing herself and joining 
her little hands together, she raised lier eyes to the me- 
dallion, and this short prayer was uttered in low, fer- 
vent, and melodious accents : O sweet Virgin Mary, 
the protectress of little children like me, have mercy on 
the soul of papa, intercede for him near thy Son, our 
Lord and Kedeemer. May he, tlirough thy intercession, 
bless mother, sister, brother, and myself, and make us 
every day grow better and better and more worthy of 
his favor ! In the name of the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Ghost. Amen !” She again crossed herself, and, 
rising demurely, she looked at Gabriel as at a friend 
whose approbation she courted, nor did she court it in 
vain. What she' had done was so unexpected, and was 
done so much after the fashion, one would suppose, of 
an infant seraph, that Gabriel was deeply moved. 

Child,” he said, “I have no doubt the Virgin Mary 
will be kind to you and listen graciously to your pray- 
ers.” But, as if he wished to escape from his own 
emotion, he said in a lighter tone : “ Pray, what is 
your name, my pretty friend 

Mary,” answered she. Mamma says I am called 
18 * 


418 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


after the mother of God, and that it would be a great 
sin if I was not good, having such a name, and if I did 
not always pray to her to keep me good/’ 

She paused, looked pensive for a minute or two, and, 
turning to Gabriel, she said with a playful smile, as if 
the consciousness had come over her that she, in her 
turn, had a right to know who her visitor was : “ IS’ow 
that you have heard my name, will you please to tell me 
yours ?” 

‘‘ Gabriel,” was the reply. 

“ O ! Gabriel, Gabriel !” she repeated, clapping her 
hands with glee, “ the angel Gabriel ! You must be 
good then, since you have the name of an angel. 1 
sometimes dream of him with his blue wings and his 
flaming sword. I wiU show him to you;” and she ran 
to the table of which I have already spoken, and, pull- 
ing a drawer, she took out of it an illustrated catechism, 
which she carried to her newly -made friend. Gabriel 
felt quite interested in her innocent chattering and her 
winning ways, and patted her affectionately on the 
head. Thus encouraged, the child showed a desire to 
sit on his knees, which he hastened to gratify ; and then, 
opening her book, she read with wonderful distinctness 
and appropriate emphasis the Lord’s prayer. Gabriel 
warmly complimented her on her proficiency. She 
looked elated with his applause, and, jumping on the 
floor, she said with exultation : I can read writing too, 
and I will show it to you.” She seized a chair, and 
got on it after having dragged it to the fire-place, and 
raising herself on the very tip of her toes, she, with 
some difficulty, pulled the medallion from its place, 
pressed a spring which made it fly open, and took out 
of it a small piece of paper which was folded with mi- 
nute care. As soon, however, as the child had it in her 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


419 


possession, the vivacity of her manner instantly departed. 
She stood in the middle of the room as if she had been 
suddenly struck with a sort of mysterious awe, or, as if 
she was not sure she had not ventured on forbidden 
ground. But, whilst she seemed to be in suspense, her 
fingers mechanically opened the paper, and, as soon as 
it was unfolded and the characters met her eyes, she 
was no longer able to resist the temptation. The pa- 
per looked as if it had been written upon with red ink. 
Gabriel was too much taken by surprise, to think of 
checking the indiscretion which the child might be com- 
mitting. To his greater astonishment, she kissed rever- 
ently the sheet she had in her hand, and said : “ It is a 
letter which papa wrote from the battle field of Shiloh, a 
short time before dying. Mother has taught me to read 
it and to know it by heart and she went on, dwelling 
as it were on every word : 

“ Dear Wife, — I shall see you no more on this side of 
the grave, nor our dear ones. This is written with the 
blood which flows from a mortal wound — a glorious 
wound — for I died for you, for my adopted country, and 
after having, thank God, saved the life of General 

B . There was a moment when our ranks were 

wavering. The general saw it. He seized a flag, and, 
putting himself at our head, he cried : ‘ Bf>ys, follow 
me to victory.’ I happened to be near hiiUj and, just 
as he was rushing forward, I saw a Federal rifleman, 
who, hidden behind a tree, was taking a deliberate aim 
at him. I had only time to throw myself upon our gen- 
eral and shield him with my body, and, as I dropped 
at his feet, struck by the shot which had been intended 
for him, I had the satisfaction to see our beloved chief 
bounding onward, followed by the whole column of our 


420 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


enthusiastic soldiers. Father Eegis, the worthy chap- 
lain of our regiment, who is now near me, will hand 
you these lines, should he survive this war and return 
to Eew Orleans, for he is as brave as a lion, priest as he 
is, and is always in the thickest of the fight, not to 
strike but to heal. Farewell, my eyes are growing dim, 
my hand is stiffening, and my head swims. Father 
Kegis will also carry to you the sacred medallion which 
you wished me to wear on my breast. It has not saved 
my life, as you fondly expected, but perhaps it has con- 
tributed to make me die a Christian. You will ob- 
serve that a drop of my blood stains the cross before 
which the Yirgin kneels. I commend you to God and 
to the heavenly care of her in whom you always had so 
much faith. It will be sweet to you to know that I 
have received all the consolations of religion from Fa- 
ther Eegis. Farewell, I hope we shall meet again in 
the bosom of God. Your loving husband, Dabxey.” 

Whilst the child had been reading, or rather reciting, 
Gabriel seemed to have been petrified into a statue. 
He was almost deprived of his senses by the sudden- 
ness of the discovery he had made, and recovered his 
self-possession only when the voice which had kept him 
spell-bound ceased to be heard. Then he felt the big 
throbbings of his heart which was bursting with emo- 
tion, and he was only relieved by a flood of tears which 
gushed from his eyes. Springing from his seat, he 
seized and pressed to his breast the struggling and as- 
tonished child, imprinting kisses on her forehead, and 
exclaiming : “ Henceforth, I am your father, Mary.” 
At that moment the door opened, and on the threshold 
stood a lady, riveted to the spot with astonishment at 
■witnessing such a scene, and hearing such an exclamation. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


421 


I said a lady, for it would have been evident to the 
most superficial observer, that she was one of that class. 
Her usually pale cheeks were slightly flushed, either 
from the exertion of walking too rapidly, or from the 
emotion which was caused by her finding a stranger un- 
der her roof and under such extraordinary circum- 
stances. She had a small bundle in her left hand, 
probably the work which she had gone out to get. Her 
right hand had been raised to her breast, which it 
pressed tightly, as if endeavoring to stifle some sudden 
pang. In her face there was an expression of intense 
surprise, mixed up with the indication of some physical 
pain. She still retained the traces of exquisite beauty, 
although she had reached more than the meridian of 
life. But cold and sharp had blown the wind of adver- 
ity, and soul and body were withering under its unin- 
terrupted blast. Alas ! what settled grief, what sub- 
dued resignation, what drooping spirit pervaded the 
features whose classical lines seemed: to be slowly fading 
away under the corroding influence of the anxieties of 
the heart and mind ! It would have been difiicult for 
any person of refined feelings to pass by her in the 
streets without stopping involuntarily, and without fol- 
lowing her with a long lingering look. It would have 
been difiicult for such a one, not to say : Poor wo- 
man ! who can she be so striking in her were those 
marks which tell that the heart will break, and brok- 
enly live on.” Her dress, on the day on which she 
thus presented herself to Gabriel, was that of a woman 
in humble life, but there was something in her which 
indicated at the first glance, that the cruel hand of an 
irresistible destiny had pushed her from a higher sphere. 
AVhen Gabriel, after having deposited the cl\ild on the 
floor, advanced a step tow^ard her and bowed with pro- 


422 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


found respect, she had completely mastered the agita- 
tion into which she had been betrayed by the unexpect- 
edness of his presence and the strangeness of his action, 
and she was waiting in a modest attitude of calm dig- 
nity for the explanation which was due to her. 

‘‘ Madam,” he said, “ I am the son of General B . 

Was I not justified in calling here, when I heard that 
your husband had died at Shiloh, and that sickness and 
destitution affected your family ? This sympathy was 
natural, was it not, in one who bears my name^ But 
now,” and he took the letter which the little girl, per- 
plexed with what had happened, still held unfolded in 
her hand, ^‘you will admit, I hope, the strength of 
these credentials on which I rely to tender you my gra- 
titude, my friendship and my support.” AVhilst thus 
speaking, he seized the hands of the poor widow, and 
shook them with the warm cordiality of an overflow- 
ing heart. 

‘‘ The pleasure, sir, which I have in seeing you,” she 
said, is not unmixed with pain, but you are welcome 
here ; pray, be seated ;” and then, turning to her child 
with a look which was meant to be severe, ‘‘ how came 
you, Mary,” she continued, to show to this gentle- 
man ” 

“Pray, madam,” said Gabriel interrupting her, “do 
not scold this dear little one. She has been the instru- 
ment of Providence. My father had related to me the 
sublime sacrifice mentioned in the letter which has just 
been read, but he had never been able to discover after 
the battle was over, who it was to whom he was in- 
debted for his life. Thank God, it is known now, and 
our debt of gratitude to you, which can never be paid, 
will entitle ns at least to your unreserved friendship.’ 

. Before Mrs. Dabney could have time to answer, the 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


423 


door which led into the next room opened softly, and a 
young woman, apparently twenty years old, barefooted, 
dressed in a long loose gown, and extremely emaciated, 
made her appearance. She was in a state of somnam- 
bulism; her eyes were fixed on vacancy. She advanced, 
with a slow step and an air of solemnity, toward the table 
which was in the centre of the room, and stood motion- 
less before it. At the first sight of this apparition, Mrs. 
Dabney had risen with precipitation and with open 
arms, as if she had intended to take hold of the som- 
nambulist, and reconduct her to the place from which 
she had come. But, if such w^as her intention, she did 
not carry it into execution, either because she dreaded 
what might result from her interference, or because she 
was overpowered by her own emotion, for she tottered 
back to her chair, and, burying her drooping head 
between her hands, she gave way to the agony of her 
grief and sobbed aloud. Mary ran to her, and flung 
gently her arms round her neck, giving her affectionate 
kisses, and saying : “ Mamma, don’t cry, don’t cry. I’ll 
take Jane back to her room.” The person who was 
called Jane said in a low, measured voice : “ Ludovico, 
here I am at the altar, to receive your plighted faith. 
You will always love me, will you?” She then timidly 
stretched forth her left hand to one whom she fancied 
standing by her, withdrew it after a little while, and 
with her right hand seemed to seek on her finger for 
an imaginary ring. Husband and wife ! , Husband 
and wife, now and forever,” she murmured, and her 
face brightened up with a transient gleam of happiness. 
The ceremony of which she dreamed being over, sbe 
turned from the table, and, with the same noiseless and 
ghostly step with wdiich she had entered, she walked to 
the door of the inner room, as if she intended to retire. 


424 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


But, on reaching it, she stopped, and with a tone of the 
deepest indignation she exclaimed, as if another current 
of thought had swept through her brain : “ What ! You 
say I am not your lawful wife. O villain ! O villain !” 
These words were followed by an unearthly shriek of 
anguish, and she fell insensible on the floor, apparently a 
corpse. Gabriel assisted Mrs. Dabney in carrying her 
daughter to her bed, and, on receiving the assurance that 
this was not an unusual incident, that no physician could 
do any good, and that his further services on the occasion 
were not needed, he felt that there are moments 
when misery must be left alone, and he glided out un- 
perceived by the afflicted mother. She was kneeling be- 
fore the couch and bending over the figure of the 
patient, Avho seemed to be gradually recovering from 
her swoon. 


CHAPTER XXXYI. 


THE TWO WIDOWS.— JANE DABNEY AND HER LOVER, LUDOV- 
ICO BARBARINI. 

Two months had elapsed, during which Gabriel had 
been unremitting in his attentions to Mrs. Dabney and 
her family. In fact, he had made himself at home under 
the roof of sickness and destitution. .All pecuniary 
assistance on his part had been persistently refused, but 
he was permitted to bring some delicacies, such as 
oranges, syrups, etc. — for the invalid Jane, who remain- 
ed invisible in her chamber, and also some slight pres- 
ents for Mary and Willie. Mrs. Dabney insisted on 
supporting herself by her work and that of her boy, the 
boot-black, whom I have already introduced into my 
narrative. Her health, however, w^as evidently getting 
feebler, and her means of living more slender. Her 
husband, an Irishman by birth, had been a commission 
merchant, and, when the war broke out, showed himself 
one of the most enthusiastic supportei’s of the so-called 
rebellion. She had been cast away by her relatives for 
having married a foreigner who was objectionable to 
them ; the quarrel had become more bitter in conse- 
quence of difficulties about money matters, and recon- 
ciliation had never taken place. On one side, there was 
the resentment of defeated avarice, the balking of 
interested hopes, the mortification of conscious mean- 
ness, the humiliation of exposed selfishness ; and, 
on the other side, the wife’s pride had never for- 

(425) 


426 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


gotten the injustice done to her husband’s character 
bj base aspersions and vindictive insinuations. It 
accounts for the isolation in which she was found. 
As to the friends w^ho had gathered round her in her 
days of prosperity, she had, as her distress increased, 
gradually withdrawn from all communion with them, 
and they had -not been very sedulous in looking 
after her, when gloom and clouds had settled around 
the once brilliant object of their admiration. On tak- 
ing possession of Hew Orleans, General Butler had 
turned her out of her house which had been confiscated, 
and had dispossessed her of her furniture. The books of 
the commercial firm of Dabney & Co. had been seized 
and destroyed ; at least, they could not be found. Mrs. 
Dabney had contrived to live during the war on a small 
sum of money which her husband had left her, when he 
departed to join the Confederate armies, and on the sil- 
ver ware and jewels wdiich she had secreted from Fed- 
eral rapacity ; she had also retained in her possession 
some promissory notes to the amount of twenty thou- 
sand dollars, which were her own private property. It 
was her dowiy which had thus been invested. The per- 
sons to whom that money had been loaned, stood so 
high in reputation and fortune before the war, that the 
precaution of taking a mortgage had been omitted, 
but general devastation, ruin and demoralization had 
come hand in hand. The rich became poor, and the 
poor, rich, and those who were thought to be honest 
proved to have been rogues in disguise, wmlvesin sheep’s 
skins. She had at last given up the expectation, once 
entertained, of collecting anything, with the exception 
of one claim ’which was represented to her as still safe, 
if her debtor chose to behave with good faith. The 
note which was now her only reliance against starva- 


FERNANDO DE LEA/OS. 


427 


tioii was drawn by one of her own sex, one who was re- 
ported, on high authority, to have largely speculated 
in cotton during the war, and to be as rich as she was 
before, if not more so. She herself, it was affirmed, had 
boasted of having a large aipount of gold in her posses- 
sion, the result of the skillful operations of which she 
was proud. She was a thorough utilitarian, there was 
no romance in her composition. Her head was a sheet 
of accounts and balances, or rather, as a mathematician 
would have said, a table of logarithms, of which the 
involutions and evolutions infallibly produced the 
required root, product, or power — which was the ac- 
quisition of money. She did not act the sister of charity 
to our soldiers like many of her sex — not she-^but she 
had put on the gabardine of Shylock, and speculated. 
At least it was the conviction of many, and all sorts of 
rumors were rife on the subject. But, as this female 
man of business has thought proper to show herself un- 
der colors of her owm which she cannot repudiate, it 
will soon be seen whether the character ascribed to her 
is not in perfect harmony with the one she had volun- 
tarily assumed in her dealings wdth Mrs. Dabney. She 
was, like this lady, a native of the State, and a Catholic, 
although of a different stripe. She had a large planta- 
tion near the town of Alexandria in the parish of 
Bapides, and lived in great affiuence. Her name was 
Cornelia Balfour. She was a widow Like her creditor, 
and the mother of a large family of grown up sons and 
daughters. Being aware of these circumstances, Mrs. 
Dabney had sent a strong appeal to Mrs. Balfour, rep- 
resenting the whole extent of her distress. She had 
written with some degree of confidence, for she was a 
widow applying to a widow, a mother to a mother, a 
woman to a woman, affliction and isolation to wealth 


428 


FEJ^.VAA'BO DE LEMOS. 


and social influence. It was the draft of adversity on 
the exchequer of prosperity, not for alms, hut for the 
payment of a just debt. The reply had raised her 
hopes of speedy relief, for it was conceived in these terms : 

“ Oak Grove, June 30, 1865. 

“Dear Madam,— I assure you on oath that I have 
not either gold, silver or greenbacks at my disposal, as re- 
ported, and that I have not been successful in any cotton 
speculation. I have though some very good notes, and 
I have had the promise of some money to be paid on 
them in a short time. 1 hold notes with mortgages for 
a handsome amount, and will be certain to pay you and 
all I owe. If I live, it is my intention to do this. I 
am doing all in my power to collect money. I do not 
wish to bring suit against any one, as I know how we 
all have sulfered during the war. If you give me time, 
it will be all settled. I will try to pay something on the 
note in a few weeks. You can rely on my doing all in 
my power to not delay payment. I have a greater wish 
to pay the money than you have to receive it. I do 
sincerely wish that I could do so now, but you can de- 
pend on me, for I will not delay settling up. I will pay 
you all I can on the note, and that, as soon as possible. 
Just give me time, and I will not disappoint you. I 
will write you next week, and will then be able to say 
when I can go to the city, and what amount I shall be 
able to pay you. Hoping this will be satisfactory, etc. 

CORNELIA BALFOUR.” 

It was of course very satisfactory. Mrs. Dabney’s 
heart dilated at the prospect of sure subsistence for her 
family. Her brave boy Willie, instead of being a 
boot-black, would be neatly dressed, and would go to 


FERN^AXDO DE LEM OS. 


420 


scliool the whole day. She indulged in visions of a 
handsome pair of shoes for Mary, and of many little 
comforts for her poor sick Jane. She never thought 
of her own. wants. A few days after, there came from 
the same source another letter, dated on the 6th of 
July, in which Mrs. Balfour repeated: ‘‘I have notes 
that are perfectly sure of being collected. They are 
mortgage notes, and 1 am using every means to collect 
them without injuring any one. You may depend on 
my word that I will do all in my power to pay that 
debt, and that very soon. I will try to see you in the 
course of ten days, when I hope to be able to satisfy 
you. I am indeed very anxious to do so. Hoping that 
you will find this satisfactory until I can do more, I 
remain, etc., etc. Coen^elia Balfoue.” 

This was, truly, making assurance doubly sure. Mrs. 
Dabney had no longer any doubt, and she raised her 
eyes to heaven in thankfulness to God. In her morn- 
ing and evening prayers she even remembered the hon- 
est debtor, and invoked blessings on her head. But the 
delay of ten days fixed in the letter elapsed, ten more 
went by, and Mrs. Balfour did not come. For two 
months, Mrs. Dabney wrote letter after letter addressed 
to Oak Grove, and, although she ascertained that they 
had reached their destination, she received no answer. 
This was passing strange ! What meant such a change, 
from an extreme desire to pay to complete indifierence, 
and to an ominous silence amounting to an absolute 
denial. At last, she called on a gentleman whom she 
knew to be a neighbor to Mrs. Balfour, and who, as she 
had heard, had recently come to the city. That gen- 
tleman read the letters which were communicated to 
him, and said to Mrs. Dabney : ‘‘ Madam, you have 

been outrageously treated. Mrs. Balfour has been re- 


430 


FERXAXDO DE LEM OS. 


peatedly coming hei-e since slie wrote to jon, and, if 
she has not called on yon, or informed yo.n of her pres- 
ence, as she had promised, it is because she has now 
accomplislied her purposes of deception. She has 
thrown off* the mask, because she thinks that, for 
the future, she is perfectly safe against your claim. 
Whilst flattering you with false hopes of payment, she 
has caused her plantation to be sold at the suit of her 
children and bought by them. She has, as the com- 
mon phrase runs, arranged her affairs. Every piece 
of property which she has, is put out of the reach of her 
creditors. I grieve to undeceive you, madam, but it 
is better that you should know the truth. Mrs. Balfour 
is what is called a very smart woman — very. You 
never will get a cent from her.” 

On receiving such bitter information, Mrs. Dabney 
had put her claim in the hands of a member - of the 
Alexandria bar, and she was reading a letter from the 
law Arm to which he belonged, when Gabriel entered 
the parlor with the familiarity of an old friend. The 
letter was still lying open in her lap, and tears were fast 
dropping on it. In answer to his anxious inquiries she 
made him acquainted with the facts which I have re- 
lated, and handed to him the communication which 
had blasted all her hopes. It ran as follows : 

“ Deae Madam, — We have obtained judgment against 
Mrs. Balfour after much litigation. She fought otf your 
claim, through her ingenious counsel, with the flerceness 
of a tigress. But we cannot rejoice over our victory, 
Mrs. Balfour has sheltered all her property by such ar- 
rangements as it will be impossible to set aside. Her 
creditors are ruined, but she remains rich and infamous. 
Hespectf Lilly, etc., chancey, fletcher & co.” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS, 


431 


Gabriel’s hand trembled with excitement as he read 
this letter. Can such things be he exclaimed. 
“ This creature should be pilloried, and these letters 
published. This frenzied love of money has defeated us 
in our glorious struggle, and it now sullies the dignity 
of our adversity. The corpse of our Southern Confed- 
eracy is wrapped up in a shroud of corruption, instead 
of being embalmed with the pure essence of public and 
private integrity. Woe to us! Our poor country is so 
demoralized as not to be recognized by its own children. 
The heroes are buried, the victims are consigned to 
oblivion, and the survivors are turning out to be swin- 
dlers, picking one another’s pockets. I can put up with 
the rascality of our former gentlemen, but, when our 
ladies aspire to graduate among thieves, I despair of 
our commonwealth. But no, thank God, we have honest 
men remaining, and we have a host of glorious women 
yet alive and purifying the land. They will regenerate 
society. Authorize me to denounce this Mrs. Balfour, 
so that she may be prosciibed by her own sex which 
she disgraces. Wherever she shall go, let the finger 
of scorn be pointed at her. Let the spoiler of the widow 
and the orphans be lashed with a whip of scorpions. 
Human justice requires it.” 

‘‘ Ho,” replied Mrs. Dabney, let us trust in divine 
justice. I dismiss this woman from my thoughts, and 
will bear my misfortune in the best way I can, with 
the help of Him who always makes good come out of 
evil. But let us turn to another subject of a far more 
painful nature, about which I have been endeavoring, 
for several days, to gather sufficient moral strength to 
address you. A sad scene which you witnessed in this 
room, may have produced in your mind suspicions un- 
favorable to the reputation of my poor dying daughter.” 


432 


FERXAXDO DE LEMOS. 


Gabriel waved his baud irapatientlj. Dear madam/’ 
be said, can yon suppose me capable of . . . 

Pray, allow me to proceed without interruption. 
This is a matter of honor — it is a proper sensitiveness. 
It reqnii^s the explanation to which I beg you to listen.” 
Gabriel folded his arms on his breast, as if fortifying 
himself against the forthcoming tale of woe which he 
expected, and bent his head in an attitude of profound 
attention. Widow Dabney continued in these terms : 

‘‘ A short time before the war, there came to ISTew 
Orleans an Italian who brought letter of introduction 
to my husband. His name was Ludovico Barbarini. 
We understood that he was a refugee who had been 
compelled to leave his country on political grounds. 
He entered into no business, and pretended to live on 
remittances which he received from abroad. He was 
a man of most winning manners and of the most insin- 
uating address, and he had gained the affection of my 
daughter Jane, before we had discovered that he was 
of dissipated habits. We still harbored the hope that 
it was not too late for him to reform. He had become 
engaged to Jane, but the marriage was postponed, be- 
cause, as Mr. Dabney frankly said to him, it Avas nec- 
essary that Ave should receive more satisfactory infor- 
mation as to his character, and that lie should give us 
a personal demonstration of the sincerity of his assur- 
ances, when he affirmed that his conduct would hence- 
forth justify us in intrusting to his keeping the happi- 
ness of our child. Thus matters stood when the Avar 
broke out. My husband Avas killed at Shiloh, as you 
knoAv, and, when General Butler came to New Orleans, 
we, to avoid all contact Avith our enemies, repaired to 
Baton Bouge, Avhere we had, besides, some interests to 
Avdiich it Avas important to attend. Ludovico Barbarini 


FERNANDO DE LEA/OS. 433 

had insisted on accompan^dng us as our natural protec- 
tor. AYhen .in Baton Rouge, yielding to his pressing 
entreaties, we consented to a private marriage, which 
he wished to be kept secret for some important consid- 
erations, until he should have an interview with the 
Italian minister at Washington. The ceremony was 
performed by the parson or cure of the town in the 
presence of two witnesses, who, shortly after, were 
compelled, with the regiment to which they belonged, 
to go to Yirginia, where they were both killed. Two 
weeks had elapsed, when Ludovico informed us that he 
could not avoid going to Washington, to see the repre- 
sentative of his government, and through him to com- 
municate with his family and with his sovereign, whose 
displeasure at his marriage he had reasons to dread. 
Four long months — they seemed eternal— crept wearily 
over us, and there was no letter from Ludovico ! At 
last, after having undergone indescribable anxieties, we 
received one in which he coldly informed us that he 
had found it to his interest to take service in the Fed- 
eral army, and to accept the grade of colonel. Words 
cannot convey any idea of the anguish which we felt. 
Another day of woe soon followed the one on which 
we had learned that Ludovico had joined our enemies, 
and enlisted under the banner of those who had de- 
prived me of a husband and his wife of a father. Ba- 
ton Rouge was taken by a body of Federal troops, the 
town was pillaged, the Catholic church sacked, the res- 
idence of the parson plundered, his archives destroyed, 
and he himself killed by a stray shot. O horror of 
horrors ! Ludovico was one of the commanders of 
those barbarians, and when, on his appearing before us, 
he found his wife in tears, and heai*d the passionate 
re]3roaches which burst from her indignant heart, he 
19 


434 


FEI^A^ANDO DE LEMOS. 


scowled at her, taunted her with bitter jests on the 
grand airs she took, and found fault with her assuming 
such liberties with him, when she was no more than his 
mistress. We were petrified with amazement. ‘Ay,’ 
said he with increasing vehemence, ‘you must learn 
better manners, and not hang up so high your flag of 
termagant virtue and boisterous patriotism. You are 
nothing but my paramour, my pretty rebel, and I will 
subdue you yet, and teach you to sit obediently on my 
fist like a tamed falcon.’ On hearing these words, my 
daughter fell insensible into my arms, and I remained 
speechless with terror. It seemed for a moment that 
reason in me was unsettled and that I was verging on 
insanity. ‘ Ha ! ha !’ he exclaimed more furiously, 
‘ you stare at me like a wild fugitive from Bedlam. 
You had better come to your senses, and look for the 
proofs of that pretended marriage. Where are the 
witnesses % Where is the priest % Where is the con- 
tract % Methinks that all these things are necessary 
and, turning on his heels, he strode away with a demo- 
niacal laugh which still rings in my ears. We imme- 
diately departed for Hew Orleans, and what has since 
become of the wretch we have never inquired. You 
have seen the condition of Jane. She has but a short 
time to live, and I know that I cannot long survive 
her, for I have a disease of the heart which is beyond 
cure, and which must soon terminate fatally. To the 
only protection of our Heavenly Father I shall have to 
leave my poor children.” 

“ Human protection shall never fail them as long as 
I live,” said Gabriel with a voice choked with emotion. 
“ O, what an excess of unrelenting and overwhelming 
misery ! What sliall I do for your relief?” His eyes 
were suflused with tears ; he took Mrs. Dabney’s hand. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


435 


wtich he pressed with all the tender affection of a son, 
and said : “ O dear mother, allow me to use that name, 
you have more fortitude than I possess. I am almost 
rebellious against heaven for inflicting such trials, 
whilst you are calm and resigned. But I must leave 
you ; I feel unwell ; I can hardly breathe in this room, 
I need the open air; excuse me if I depart abruptly. 
I thank you for having been so frank and for having 
conflded to me your sorrows,” and he rushed rather 
than walked out of the room. 


CHAPTEE XXXm 


GABRIEL, THE FRIEND OF JANE DABNEY, CALLS ON ODLONEL 

LUDOVICO BARBARINI, HER BETRAYER. — A FASHIONABLE 

BALL. 

Gtabriel had hardly passed through the small gate 
which opened into the street before he stopped. He 
breathed with difficulty and as if he was suffocating. 
After a little while, he resumed his hurried walk, shak- 
ing his fist menacingly. Thank God,” said he, this 
time it is not a woman who has done the wrong. It is 
a man — a Federal officer, to boot,” and he stamped his 
foot as if he was crushing a reptile. Ludovico Bar- 
barini ! I have seen the dastardly dog. Well, well, I 
swear by the memory of Shiloh and Dabney that it 
shall be no fault of mine, if there is not ere long one 

rascal missing on the staff of Gen. C .” Faster and 

more irregular his steps became as he went on, Kke 
those of one laboring under theinfiuence of some uncon- 
trollable passion. There must have been on his face a 
very visible expression of the feelings which convulsed 
his heart, for more than one of those persons whom he 
met in the streets looked at him wonderingly, as he 
hurried on perfectly unconscious of the attention which 
he excited. He came to the corner of Carondelet and 
Canal streets, where an old black woman was seated 
with a basket of cakes before her. He upset it as he 
passed, and, being recalled to himself by the exclama- 
tions of distress which he had provoked, he filing at the 
( 436 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


437 


injured woman a dollar, and was out of si^fht before 
she had recovered from the perturbation into which 
she had been thrown. She lost no time in picking up 
carefully her scattered ware and replacing it in her 
basket, now blowing off the dust which some of the 
articles had borrowed from the pavement, and now say- 
ing to herself, whilst she shook her head dolefully like 
a Chinese doll : Young massa, w^hoever he may be, is 
clean mjid. Somebody will be hurt soon, if the old 
missus don’t keep him at home.” 

On the next day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, 
Gabriel was seen coming out of the office of the Italian 
consul. There he had learned, among other particulars, 
that Ludovico Barbarini had not left his country, as 
was generally supposed, for political reasons, but 
because his extreme profligacy had involved him in 
affairs of so serious a nature, that he had been com- 
pelled to fly. All the information which I have com- 
municated to you,” added the consul when Gabriel 
parted from him, “is strictly confidential. To none 
else must it be known except to him who calls himself 
Colonel Barbarini, in case you should think that what I 
have intrusted to your honor and discretion may facili- 
tate the success of your undertaking, although I am 
sorry to say I do not expect for it any favorable issue.” 
On leaving the consul’s office in Koyal street, Gabriel 
crossed Canal, and entered St. Charles street, up which 
he walked slowly and wrapped in meditation. He 
looked very different from what he did the day before. 
There was no longer any agitation in his manner. He was 
calm, entirely master of himself, and the expression of 
his face was that of thoughtful resolution. Whatever 
his determination, his mind was made up to accomplish 
it, and inflexibility of purpose always cools a man. It 


438 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


steels the nerves and regulates the pulsations of the 
blood. Arriving at the splendid mansion in which re- 
sided Gen. C , he rang the bell. It was twelve 

o’clock. To the servant who answered his summons 
he handed a card, which he requested to be carried to 
Colonel Barbarini. He was ushered into a ujagnificent 
saloon, in which the most conspicuous object was a full 
size oil portrait of President Abraham Lincoln, and 
where he was left alone. In a few minutes Colonel 
Barbarini made his appearance. He advanced within 
a few steps of Gabriel, and, bowing with formal courtesy, 
said : 

‘‘ I am happy to see Captain Gabriel, whatever may 
be the business which brings him here,” and, pointing 
to a seat, he took one for himself. 

It was impossible for any one to meet Colonel Bar- 
barini, without being at once impressed, if not favorably 
to his character, at least with the striking and innate 
air of distinction with which his whole person seemed 
to be impregnated, not because he was a truly magnifi- 
cent specimen of mortality in his physical proportions, 
but rather on account of a certain high bred reserve 
which enveloped him as his natural atmosphere, and 
which was not destitute of a mysterious sort of at- 
traction. Although exquisitely polite, those with whom 
he was most familiar, after his fashion of familiarity, 
were kept at a distance without their knowing exactly 
how, and without the possibility of their being offended. 
Whatever he was to women, who all spoke enthusiasti- 
cally of his elegance of manner and genial warmth of 
feeling, to men he was coldly bland, and intense pride 
peeped through the velvet mask which he cast over it. 
Even his military associates, or his boon companions, had 
never been able to detect an unguarded moment of re- 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


439 


.axation in liis dignified urbanity. He bad established 
around himself an invisible barrier, beyond which the 
closest intimacy could not venture to penetrate. There 
was, however, somethin’^ sinister on that smooth and 
noble brow, and in those sedate dark eyes which, like 
the ocean when unruffled, seemed to grow deeper and 
deeper and more unfathomable under your gaze. 
Nature had put there an indescribable mark, which 
would not have escaped an attentive observer, and 
whicli would have’ said to him : heware. There is a sort 
of Olympian boldness of depravity which may, at 
times, awe virtue itself into confusion, and Gabriel was 
not proof against the snake-like fascination which he 
felt creeping over his faculties in the presence of the 
man he had sought, and he was vexed at this unexpect- 
ed sensation. He soon rallied, however, and, in answer 
to the courteous phrase which had been .addressed to 
him with some stateliness of manner, he said : 

‘‘ You have guessed right, sir. I could have no 
reason to call on Colonel Barbarini except on business, 
and on business of an important nature.” 

“ Whatever may be the nature of that business,” re- 
plied Barbarini, Captain Gabriel may be sure that it 
will afford me pleasure to gratify him, if possible.” 

May it be so,” continued Gabriel, but, before pro- 
ceeding any further, and that we may come at once to 
a correct understanding of our respective position, and 
of the subject of which we have to treat together, it is 
better that all disguise should be dropped. Hence I 
ask your permission to say to you at once that I have 
not called on Colonel Barbarini, and that I have noth- 
ing to do with such a personage.” 

‘‘ You speak in riddles, sir,” said Barbarini, and his 
piercing look seemed to endeavor to penetrate the hid- 


440 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


den meaning of those strange words. He was not long 
kept in suspense. 

Ho, sir,” continued Gabriel, ‘‘ I do not address here 
Ludovico Barbarini, but Carlo Visconti, prince of Mas- 
sarino.” 

A slight manifestation of surprise, which was imme- 
diately checked, a transient compression of the lips, Avas 
all that he could discover in the individual on whom 
his eyes were intently fixed. A moment of silence en- 
sued. Barbarini was the first to break it. 

‘^Pray, Captain Gabriel,” he said with the utmost 
composure, “ what excuse will you give me for this pry- 
ing into the afiairs of an utter stranger to you?” 

“ Ho excuse whatever, prince of Massarino ; I am 
only exercising a right. You will understand it, when 
I inform you that I am the intimate friend and the 
sworn protector of the Dabney family.” 

Ha, ha ! I see it all,” said the Italian elevating his 
eye-brows superciliously ; ‘‘ I see through it all at one 
glance. You are, my good sir, on a Quixotic expedi- 
tion,* eh ? 1 have before me a paladin of romance, a 

redresser of wrongs.” 

“ I regret to see, sir,” replied Gabriel, “ that you are 
disposed to treat with such levity the mission which I 
thought it my duty to assume as a man of honor. I 
had come here Avith the hope, a faint one, I confess, 
that a prince of the illustrious house of Visconti, re- 
membering what is due to himself, to his lineage and to 
his rank, when made aAvare that he is known, and on 
an appeal being addressed to a conscience which might 
not be entirely callous, and which might Avake up to a 
sense of justice and virtue, would not choose to remain 
guilty of the perpetration of wrongs which it is never 
too late to repair.” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


441 


“ I warn you,” said Barbarini, for I shall continue to 
giv^e him that name, ‘‘I warn you that E prefer the 
paladin to the preacher.” 

Be it so,” was the answer, and I warn you, in my 
turn, that I prefer the gentleman to the prince, and I 
regret to find them not united in Ludovico' Barbarini, 
colonel of a regiment of cavalry, and disgracing the 
epaulettes which he wears.” 

Lud'ovico Barbarini rose from his seat without be- 
traying any emotion, and, with a voice in which there 
could only be detected a slight fastidiousness of tone, 
said : “You must be aware. Captain Gabriel, of the 
late Confederate Army, that such a remark closes at 
once our present interview. I understand you, of course, 
to invite me to another, in a different place. Shall I 
have the honor to re-conduct you to the front door ? ” 
To the front door both went, and bowed courteously to 
each other as they parted. 

In the evening of that day, one of the largest and 
finest houses of the city was illuminated, in consequence 
of a sumptuous entertainment given to her friends by 
Miss Sarah Butler. She was living with her mother 
and a married sister. Although possessing great wealth 
and having had of course many suitors, she had re- 
mained single. Perhaps, as she exaggerated her home- 
liness, she imagined that all those who approached her 
for matrimonial purposes were fortune hunters. Per- 
haps she was right, perhaps she was wrong ; for, if she 
had no personal beauty, she was not repulsive, and she 
certainly had moral and intellectual qualifications which 
might have won the heart of a man of worth, possess- 
ing a correct appreciation of excellence in woman. But 
she had persistently rejected all offei-s, numerous as they 
were, and, at the time when the incidents I am relat- 
19 * 


442 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


ing were taking place, she w^as about thirty-five years 
old. She was a strict Presbyterian, but eclectic in her 
charities. Few knew the whole extent of the good 
which she did in secret. The clock of the cathedral 
had just struck twelve, when Gabriel entered one of 
the magnificently lighted apartments. The first per- 
son lie met was Miss Sarah, who came to him with 
a manifestation of warm and affectionate greeting, say- 
ing in a play/ully reproachful manner : 

“ Why so late, sir knight ? Many belles have been 
looking round for you, and missing you sadly.” 

“ The loss is mine,” answered Gabriel. ‘‘ But I have 
been spending the evening with the Dabneys. J ane, 
alas, is fast growing worse, and will not be long of this 
wmrld. Perhaps, after all, it is the best thing that 
could happen to her.” 

‘‘ How thankful I should be to you, Gabriel,” said 
Miss Sarah, ‘‘for having made me acquainted with your 
suffering friends, were it not so difficult to relieve 
them. But Mrs. Dabney is one whom it is impossible 
to put under the slightest obligation. She is so over- 
sensitive ! She refuses the gifts of friendship, under 
the apprehension that they may be alms. It is so pain- 
fully shocking to know that, sick as she is, she w^orks 
so hard, and will not forbid that stout-hearted boy, 
Willie, to be boot-blacking under the portico of the St. 
Charles Hotel ! You must scold her, indeed you must.” 

“ Hot I, surely, gentle lady. I admire Mrs. Dabney’s 
resolution too much for that, although I regi-et it for 
your sake and mine. But do you conceive. Miss Sarah,” 
said he, sinking his voice into a tremulous whisper, 
“ can you realize all the keenness and bitterness of the 
torture which lies in the bare idea of being an object 
of charity?” 


F.iRNANDO DE LEMOS. 


443 


“ Ah ! naughty boy,” said the lady, looking at him 
with the complacency of maternal fondness, ‘^you are 
too proud yonrself. This pride is in our very blood — 
the warm Southern blood of Louisiana. But, my friend, 
pride is sinful. After all, the meaning of the word 
charity may he 'misunderstood, or misapplied. Why 
should thwe be any thing humiliating in being what is 
called an object of charity, or the occasion for the ex- 
ercise of benevolence ? If I have more than I need, 
why should I not divide it with those whom it may 
benefit? Why should they refuse their just share in the 
inheritance of the goods of this world, when tendered 
to them? Those who accept from me what I can 
spare, amply repay me by the pl-easure which I am per- 
mitted to derive from their acceptance.” 

This is nobly thought and nobly expressed,” replied 
Gabriel, “ and it is worthy of you, but still, in your 
heart of hearts, I know there is someting that responds 
to the -delicacy of Mrs. Dabney’s feelings — is there 
not ?” 

Well, well, Gabriel,” answered the lady, evading 
so direct a question, “ you are so fond of contradicting 
me ! Instead of teasing me in this way with all this 
nonsense, you must come to my assistance. We must 
enter into a regular conspiracy against the pride of 
Mrs. Dabney ; we must tax our ingenuity to find out 
something that may be acceptable. It is too harrowing 
to think of thi3 condition of that poor family, particu- 
larly in the midst of this scene of gayety ! It throws 
a funeral pall over it. I reproach myself with all this 
display of opulence, when I remember that, not far from 
here, there is a mother hard at work for the bread of 
to-morrow.” This was said with an earnestness which 
showed the depth of her feelings. 


444 


FERNANDO DE DEMOS. 


Ecallj, Miss Sarali,” whispered Gabriel, do jou 
know that you are the loveliest Woman I have ever 
seen, altlioiigh you are always talking about your being 
a fright? Your soul embellishes your whole person 
like yonder light shining through the transparent sub- 
stance of that alabaster vase. Do you want to make 
me fall like a lover at your feet ?” 

“ Oh, no,” said the lady, laughing, “ my days of ro- 
mance, if ever I had any, are past never to come back. 
I will not, by entrapping you, break so many hearts 
younger than mine. Besides, lovers are not to be trusted, 
but friends are, and to friends secrets are told. I have 
one for you. Give me your arm, and lead me to yon- 
der vacant sofa. That’s right. ISTow, sit by me, and 
look as grave and wise as some hoary minister of 
state who is to be consulted by some inexperienced 
queen — old Cecil Burleigh, for instance, and Elizabeth 
of England. 

Let the queen speak,” said Gabriel, with a smile, 
the octogenarian wisdom of her loyal subject is at her 
service.” 

“Well, then, to the point, Mr. Counsellor; let us 
lose no time, for you are wanted for the next cotillion.” 

“ I occupy the seat of honor here, and I am not in a 
hurry to relinquish it, I am sure.” 

“ Flatterer !” exclaimed Sarah, “ I see that, young as 
you are, you could play the courtier as well as any 
Leicester, or Essex. But let us be serious. Fifteen thou- 
sand dollars diverted from my very ample fortune will 
hardly be missed, and would not be much, if taken 
away from those expectations which my family may 
legitimately entertain, and which I ought not to disap- 
point. What would you say, if I provided for your 
little favorite, Mary, and settled that sum on her? 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


445 


Would Ml'S. Dabney consider it a humiliating charity ? 
Would she refuse it 

“ I say,” spoke Gabriel, transported with joy and 
amazed at the liberality of the donation, “ that you are 
an angel, and that it would be impious to refuse an an- 
gel’s gifts.” 

Then it is all settled,” added the generous benefac- 
tress, giving him a slight tap on the shoulder with her 
fan, and I appoint you my minister plenipotentiary 
for that negotiation. J^ow, I dismiss you, and I send 
you to court yonder beautiful fairies, who have a better 
title to your compliments than an old maid.” 

She rose to shake bands with a venerable looking old 
gentleman, who, thinking it was time for him to retire, 
was seeking for her to take leave. An artist would 
have been delighted to paint that magnificent head 
crowned with long locks of hair as white as snow, 
which fell down on his shoulders, and which were an 
^propriate frame for a countenance beaming with be- 
nevolence. He was one of the elders and pillars of her 
church. As he approached, Gabriel leaped from his 
seat with a buoyant heart and joined in the dance. 


CHAPTER XXXVni. 


THE 01 iD SPANIARD ALVAREZ. — A CHAPTER ON IMPULSES. 

On the following morning, you must accompany me, 
gentle or ungentle reader, to a princely house on Ram- 
part street occupied by a Spaniard, called Pedro Alva- 
rez, who, as a merchant, had made a large fortune in 
New Orleans. He was a childless widower, and had 
reached the age of sixty. So honorable had been all 
his mercantile transactions during more than a quarter 
of a century, that the most envious malignity had not 
dared to throw on his character the slightest aspersion. 
He was a type of the old Castilian, as generous as a 
prince, or as a prince should be, and had always been as 
punctilious on points of honor as a knight-errant. He 
had reconciled two things apparently irreconcilable, 
chivalry and commerce. There never had been an ap- 
plication made in vain to him for any benevolent or 
scientific contribution, unless by a priest, or a mathema- 
tician. He had a thorough antipathy for these two 
classes of men, and how they came to be thus united in 
his deep and relentless aversion has always remained a 
mystery. It is hard to imagine what connection there 
may have been in his mind between these two objects 
of his detestation. It must have been a monomania. 
Who is without a monomania of some sort or other, 
patent, or secret? ‘‘Priests,” he used to say, “have 
( 446 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


447 


very little in common with the religion which they 
preach. Religion is love, religion is charity, and those 
priests always beg, but never give. Who ever saw a 
priest cross the open palm of a beggar’s hand with a 
piece of silver? I^ot I, faith ! They grab right and 
left, but always for themselves.” He had another pe- 
culiarity. He never went to church, but he never al- 
lowed a day to pass without reading a chapter of the 
Hew Testament. He sometimes muttered between his 
teeth this passage of the Gospel where Christ says : And 
when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites 
are : for they love to pray standing in the synagogues 
and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen 
of men. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy 
closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy 
Father which is in secret.” As to mathematicians, he 
was equally severe on them. They would, as he main- 
tained, reduce all the operations of the brain to algebraic 
calculations, if they could. Out upon them,” he exclaim- 
ed with indignation. ‘‘ Have they not the presumption 
to assimilate themselves to God, and to say that He is 
only the greatest of them all ? Pshaw ! Algebra, geome- 
try and trigonometry are their Holy Trinity.” 

“ Be sure of it, sir,” he would sometimes say to a 
friend who, amused at his theological eccentricities, 
would occasionally draw him out on the subject, “ the 
universe is nothing but a big heart of which God is the 
centre, and the palpitations of which are so many im- 
pulses which carry life and motion throughout the in- 
finite. That is the reason why God is ineffably good. 
All impulses originate in God, who is the primitive, 
the self-sufficient, the self-producing impulse. What are 
the physical laws of nature ? They are defined as the 
invariable tendencies and determinations of any species 


448 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


of matter to a particular form, or to certain motions, 
changes and relations which unfoJd themselves in the 
same circumstances. Well, can you understand a ten^ 
dency, a course, a determination, a motion, without an 
impulse ? What is mind ? Is it a receptacle of ideas com- 
municated or imparted? If so, how can there be any 
communicating or imparting, without something that 
is transferred, and how can there be any transfer 
without motion, and any motion without an impulse? 
Or, is mind a mere ethereal and perennial source emit- 
ting from its depths innate conceptions or thoughtsT? 
If so, how can tliere be any thing emitted or shot forth 
without the spring of impulse? Hence nature is aU 
impulse and action, nothing but an agglomeration, or 
rather a concatenation, of impulses descending from 
God to the w^orm through the whole chain of created 
things. Even mathematicians have impulses, although 
half developed, because they are made of stuff which 
is but a poor conductor of the required electricity. 
Why, sir, I speak advisedly on the subject ; w^henever 
I pretended to reason and calculate before acting, I 
went astray. All my success in life came from im- 
pulse, and all my failures from what men are so proud 
of — reason — or what is so called. It is a fact, although 
it may sound nonsensical, or paradoxical. Facts are 
facts ; they are as hard as adamant. My trading oper- 
ations or speculations were mere impulses, and, never- 
theless, I am worth five hundred thousand dollars. 
Instinct or impulse is a good pointer ; its setting is al- 
most infallible; it starts the true game, and not the snake 
in the grass. Cold-blooded calculation in affairs of this 
life is nothing but a mischievous and implacable logi- 
cian. The moment a man betakes himself to calculat- 
ing, he is on the high road to rascality. AU impulses, 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS, 449 

generally speaking, are noble, because they are of God ; 
whilst all those world-wise calculations which check the 
impulses of the soul are bad, because of the devil. 
Show me a grand, a sublime action in history which 
did not come from impulse, and in which there was 
not a complete absence of reasoning, or calculation. 
Every act of heroism is a piece of nonsense, and yet it 
draws tears of admiration ! Even St. Paul tells us that 
the preaching of the gospel is ‘ foolishness.’ When a 
inan is in the habit of saying ; I calculate that FU do 
this^ or Fll do that^ set him down at once for a knave. 
Hence I like impulsive men and impulsive nations. 
The greatest were the most impulsive — such as the 
people of Greece, Italy, France, and particularly Spain 
— a country where, when the national fibre is touched 
even by the prick of a pin, the whole nation will spring 
up to arms in an instant, without previous concert, and 
without thinking of the effect it may have on the rise 
or fall of stocks, or on the sale of dry-goods. Look at 
the women, they are a thousand times better than we 
are. Ho one who ever knew his mother wiU deny 
that. And why are they better ? Because, as a gen- 
eral rule, they don’t reason, or calculate. They only 
feel, and that’s enough. Thank God, they are not logi- 
cians ; they act merely from impulse. Whenever a 
woman reasons, she is lost at once. She becomes strong- 
minded, and a strong-minded woman, sir, is Antichrist 
himself.” 

Some of the every-day acts of Alvarez in ordinary 
life were as eccentric as his metaphysical and philo- 
sophical doctrines. For instance, he had gradually 
withdrawn from commerce, and yet he still kept his 
counting-house as before, and three or four clerks who 
did nothing but pick their teeth from morning to night. 


450 FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 

This sort of business was certainly far from producing 
enough to pay their wages and the rent of the store. 

Poor things,” Alvafhz was once heard to say in relation 
to these clerks, “ I do not exactly need them, but then 
they have families to support.” At 11 o’clock, every 
day,, except Sundays of course, old Alvarez, very 
sprucely dressed, with a glossy hat and shining patent 
leather shoes, for he was very precise on these points, 
would, with the utmost punctuality, make his appear- 
ance at his counting-house, read the newspapers, smoke 
four or live of the purest Havanas, converse with some 
friends, who dropped in, peruse and dictate a few letters, 
and, at two, the business of the day was over. He 
would slowly wend his way home, never failing to stop, 
during warm weather, at the same soda shop, to take a 
glass of that refreshing beverage. 

On the morning which I have mentioned, old Alva- 
rez had just finished his breakfast and was taking his 
last bumper of malaga, when Gabriel opened the door 
of the apartment with the familiarity and assurance of 
one who knew that he could rely on a hearty welcome, 
and saluted him with a Good morning, most worthy 
and excellent sir ; glad to see you looking so well.” 

“ Ah ! Dearest son of a dear friend, why did you 
not come soon enough to enliven the breakfast of the 
soKtary old man?” said Alvarez, and he folded the 
youth caressingly in his arms. “It is not too late, 
though, to take a glass of pure malaga. It is sound to 
the core, and will not sour on your stomach like those 
thin adulterated French wines.” 

“ Thank you, not any for the present,” replied Ga- 
briel. “ I have something of importance to communi- 
cate to you. Can you give me half an hour?” 

“ And why not, carissimo hijo mio The whole 

* My dearest son. 


FERN-AiVDO DE LEMOS. 451 

day, if you need it. But how is my much esteemed 
and much loved friend, General B 

Well, I hope ; for I have not heard from him since 
his late departure from New Orleans, and it is because 
he is absent that I come to you as to a second father.’^ 

“ This is speaking, cliild, like thy father’s son, 
like thee the better for it.” 

Gabriel took a seat by the old man, and remained 
pensive for a moment, whilst his companion was con- 
templating him with an expression of paternal fondness. 
‘‘ Sir,” said he, I have taken the liberty to call thus 
early, because I have things which I wish you to say 
to my father, in case I see liim no more, for I have a 
duel to-day.” 

“ Heavens ! What do you say ?” exclaimed the 
Spaniard springing from liis easy arm-chair with all the 
impetuosity of a young man ; “ and who in this com- 
munity will dare to raise his arm against the son of 

General B ? It must be some felon, whom it is 

impossible that you should meet on a footing of equality. 
I will have this affair stopped immediately.” 

“ Pray, my venerated friend, listen to me, and be 
composed. This thing cannot be stopped. I must re- 
late to you all the particulars, so that you may repeat 
them to my father, if I fall. Otherwise, I would have 
spared you this interview and the anxieties which it 
will cause you.” 

Gabriel first related his meeting the little boot-black 
at the portico of the St. Charles Hotel, and then his 
subsequent discovery of the miserable condition of the 
Dabney family. 

And you did not come to me !” said Alvarez in a 
reproachful tone. 

Pardon me, I had no appeal to make to your 


452 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


generosity, for Mrs. Dabney would receive no assist- 
ance.” 

Gabriel went on relating all that we already know, 
with the exception of mentioning the rank and the 
true name of Ludovico Barbarini, and other particulars 
concerning that individual which he had promised the 
Italian consul to keep to himself. 

“ This is a sad story,” said the Spaniard, when Ga- 
briel had done, “ and the sadder because you are going 
to risk your life against that of a scoundrel. I do not 
well see, however, how it can be prevented. But, by 
the by, my young friend, do you not see here the beau- 
tiful etfects of impulses ? In the self-sacrificing Dabney 
on the battle-field, in the sensitive and proud mother 
working herself to death for her children and refusing 
assistance, in the deserted young wife dying of grief, 
in the boy Willie supporting bravely his family with 
his shoe brush, in the lovely little Mary prattling and 
praying so touchingly, and reading to you the bloody 
letter, in your own self coming to the rescue and beard- 
ing that Italian bandit in his den, in your friend Sarah 
Butler, God bless her, who opens her purse so magnifi- 
cently for the relief of distress, what is there but a 
chain of impulses, the upper end of which is in the 
hand of the Ruler of the universe, and the whole of 
which is working as He directs.” 

‘‘Then,” said Gabriel. smiling, “Barbarini’s conduct 
must have proceeded merely from bad impulses, and he 
can hardly be responsible for ... .” 

“ Ho, no, sir,” exclaimed the old Spaniard fiercely, 
and striking a heavy blow with his fist on the breakfast- 
table, “ all impulses are from a Divine source. God 
never made a rogue or a rascal. But this fellow Bar- 
barini, depend on it, reasoned too much ; he argued. 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. ' 


453 


lie debated within himself, he calculated, and, with all 
the additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions 
which he made on the tablet of his brain, about what 
he had, or had not, the right to do for the gratification 
of his beastly appetites, he arrived at the result of being 
a rascal. That was the solution of the problem. I will 
wager something that he is a Jesuit, or a mathemati- 
cian.” 

I will take up your bet on another day,” said Gab- 
riel, ^‘but, for the present, I must content myself with 
taking leave of you and embracing you perhaps for the 
last time. The hour appointed for the hostile meeting 
approaches, and my second waits for me near the Or- 
leans Theatre, where there is, as you know, a spacious 
ball-room, which we have selected as suiting our pur- 
pose, and which will be ready to receive us at twelve 
o’clock.” 

Stop, we have almost an hour before us,” said Al- 
varez, pulling out his watch. Let us settle a little 
piece of business before we depart, for with you I go, 
as I am determined to see this affair through.” He 
went to an escritoir which was in a corner of the room, 
opened it, wrote a few lines on a scrap of paper, and 
returning to Gabriel, ‘‘ My child,” he said, ‘‘ I am some- 
what superstitious. All impulsive men are so. I be- 
lieve that those who bring good luck to others have 
good luck for themselves, and I want you to have luck 
this morning, when you cross swords with that adver- 
sary of yours. You had luck yesterday for Mary, and 
you shall have luck to-day for Willie. I want to crowd 
your hands with the very best cards, and make yon win 
the game when that Italian stands in front of you with 
nothing but his rascality in Ms breeches to meet your 
trumps. Here,” continued he, giving to Gabriel the 


454 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


papor he held between the index and the thumb, “ here 
is a check for ten thousand dollars, to raise and educate 
your little boot-black ; put it in your pocket, and let it 
be a spell to ward olf tbe point of tlie devil’s weapon, 
when directed against your breast. Let your arm be 
nerved by the idea that you have such good news to 
carry to Mrs. Dabney. Pin the Italian to the wall like 
a vile insect, which he is.” 

Gabriel threw his arms round the neck of Alvarez 
and kissed him on both cheeks. Do n’t thank me so 
much,” said the latter. ‘‘It is not worth it. I am 
paying a mere debt, after all. I have been more than 
once plundered by those Yankees, and I owe them a 
grudge for that. I hate them — they are a close calcu- 
lating race — all, mathematicians — every one of them — 
creatures without impulses — nature’s unfinished, incom- 
plete work — physiological abortions — all brain and no 
heart. I would, at any time, have paid half-a-dollai 
per head to have those canting blue-nosed puritans 
swept out of this world, which they would, if they 
could, turn into a vast steam-factory of bags of money 
and tons of isms of all sorts ; and, as I suppose that 
your father must be responsible for having sent at least 
twenty thousand of them, to show their ledgers and 
books of accounts to the Supreme Judge, I owe liim 
ten thousand dollars for it, which I pay to you as his 
representative.” 

“ Bah !” said Gabriel, laughing, “ I know yon better 
than you do yourself. You can not impose on me. If 
you saw a regiment of wounded and starving Yankees 
on the ground, you would let go another check of ten 
thousand dollars for their relief. It would be your 
impulse, and I should admire you and love you the 
more for it, father.” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


455 


Tut ! tut !” said the old man, “ jou are too soft, too 
lenient, Gabriel, and I am a great deal worse than you 
think. Yes,” he continued with animation, ‘‘I would 
have fought those Yankees until doo‘ms-day. We, Span- 
iards, never yield. Cantahri indomiti : — the indomi- 
table Cantabrians — is it not so that it runs in Horace ? 
Your memory is better than mine, and you are fresh 
from Alma Mater. W ell, well — but those of our race are 
impulsive, you see, and these people here are a reason- 
ing, philosophic set. Perhaps,” he added with a slight 
sarcastic tone, it is better for your commercial pros- 
perity and worldly welfare that you should be as you 
are. Every man to his impulses, or his nature, or his 
training, like any other animal, and God’s will be done.” 
His own impulse at that particular moment was to take 
his hat, and to wind his right arm around Gabriel’s 
left, saying : Let us go to the Hew Orleans 1^11-room. 
It is time. But, Gabriel, those Horthern country-men 
of yours, seriously speaking, are a very exceptional set 
among the sons of Adam. Ask any other man but a 
Yankee whether white is black, and that man’s first 
impulse will be to say : Ho. Hot so with a Yankee. He 
will reason himself and will try to reason others into the 
belief that black is white.” Thus talking, he had reach- 
ed the street with his youthful companion. “Pietro,” 
he said, addressing a servant who had accompanied 
them to the front door, and who was going to close it, 
“ Pietro, leave the bottle of malaga on the table, and 
have two clean glasses ready. I will shortly bring 
Gabriel home with me.” 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 


A DUEL. — COLONIEL LUDOVICO BARBAKINI DEES LIKE A 
PRINCE. 

At tlie corner of Bourbon and Orleans streets, Gab- 
riel, accompanied by Alvarez, met bis second, who was 
waiting for him. The three gentlemen walked together 
to St. Anne street, and, turning into it in the direction 
of the river, soon stood before a massive door of di- 
lapidated appearance. On three measured taps being 
given, it turned noiselessly on its hinges, and Gabriel 
with his Companion entered into a dark ante-room, and 
looked in vain for the person who had given them ad- 
mittance. He was no vrhere to be seen. They trod 
their way through several gloomy passages which seem- 
ed to be known to Gabriel, and, after going through 
more than one large and empty apartments, they at 
last reached the ball-room, which fronts on Orleans 
street. It had been in better days the Almack of the 
city, where fashion, beauty and wealth had delighted 
to meet. There had been the gorgeous revels of taste 
and opulence, the remembrance of which still dwells in 
the land; there had been the night-protracted dance 
until the early morn, the gayety of the sparkling goblet 
and flower-decorated banquet, the fascination of social 
intercourse enlivened by wit and refined by elegance of 
manner ; there had been the bewitching strains of soul- 
stirring music ; there the warm atmosphere of love, the 
(456) 


FERXANDO DF. LEMOS. 457 

glee laugh of pleasure and the pent-up emotions of the 
heart palpitating under its panoply of velvet, silk and 
lace. So much for the former splendor of this magic 
hall of fairy-like memories. I^ovv that splendor had 
departed, and left no vestige of the past ; owls seemed 
to dwell in the solitude from which the gay birds of 
paradise had fled. Occasionally, it was still used at 
night for political meetings, or for some entertainment 
or other of a plebeian nature ; and, in the day, more 
than one duel had been fought wdthin its dingy and 
mournful walls. Ludovico Barbarini and a friend were 
already on the spot. Another individual was present ; 
it was a well-known surgeon of the city with his omin- 
ous box of tools. The new comers bowed gravely to 
the party which they found in possession of the room, 
and the seconds of Gabriel and Ludovico, after exam- 
ining the swords wliich were to be used by the combat- 
ants and measuring their length, handed them to those 
for whom they had been brought. Whilst Gabriel and 
Ludovico had taken their position in front of each 
other, and, in order to feel each other’s skill and power 
of muscles, were skirmishing wdth slight passes like 
good swmrdsmen, wLich they both were, old Alvarez, 
concealing his emotion under a calm exterior, and re- 
tiring into the embrasure of a heavily curtained win- 
dow, clasped his hands together, and, raising his eyes 
to Heaven, said : ‘‘ O God ! O Almighty self-originat- 
ing impulse, supreme mover and ruler of the universe, 
grant that this young man escape unhurt from the peril 
which threatens him, and I will, before the close of this 
day, give ten thousand dollars to the Charity Hospital, 
wLere the poor whom Thou lo vest, and the sorrow and 
disease-stricken whom Thou pitiest, are wiaiting for 
relief.” 


20 


458 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


He liad liardlj uttered these words, when he was 
startled hj a fierce clashing of swords, wliich showed 
that the conflict had become more animated. The two ad- 
versaries were about equally matched. Gabriel was more 
agile ; Ludovico more robust. Thrusts were parried with 
'the same vigor and rapidity with which they were given. 
How Gabriel pressed on Ludovico with such impetu- 
osity as to drive him to the opposite w^all, and now Lu- 
dovico, returning the fury of the attack, compelled 
Gabriel in his turn to retreat. So swift were the wea- 
pons, that they gleamed like streaks of lightning, and 
entwined like snakes shooting in anger their forked 
tongues of fire. Most expert must the two adversaries 
have been in the noble art of attack and defence, for 
five minutes had elapsed without any wound being 
inflicted. The experienced eye of Gabriel’s second 
detected incipient fatigue in his friend, and said: 

According to the stipulations made and accepted' for 
this meeting, the parties are now at liberty to rest.” 
They stopped, and separated with a courteous bow. 
Gabriel went to Alvarez, who shook his hand warmly 
and spoke to him words of encouragement. “My 
young friend,” he said, “ I am proud of you. The Cid 
himself could not have fought better. Rest yourself 
thoroughly, and, wdien you begin again, gird up all 
your energy and strength, think of the wrongs of dying 
Jane and of the rascality of this superb bandit, and 
throw your whole soul into one mighty impulse — then, 
one leap forward — one single blow at him from the very 
depth of your heart — and he will fall dead under the 
thunderbolt of your vigorous and irresistible arm, just- 
ly raised to punish crime.” 

As to Ludovico, he had sauntered leisurely to a large 
mirror at the extremity of the room., before which, 


FERNANDO DE LEM OS. 


459 


with the utinost composure and complacency, he drew 
himself up to his full height, displaying the magnificent, 
harmonious proportions of an Apollo, and trying, as it 
Avere, the elasticity of his muscles. He was in a civil- 
ian’s dress of exquisite taste and elegance. After a 
little while, he Avalked hack to the centre of the room 
where the swords had remained deposited on a chair ; 
and to Gabriel, who was approaching, he said in the 
tone of one Avho was receiving a favor : ‘‘ I thank you, 
for the pleasant exercise you have afforded me. Shall 
we resume it f ’ Gabriel assented Avith a nod, and took 
up his sword. This time, Alvarez came out of his 
hiding place behind the curtain in the recess of the 
Avindow, and, planting himself near Gabriel, fixed his 
eyes on Ludovico. Evidently the aged Spaniard had 
yielded to one of those impulses of which he loved so 
much to talk ; for no tigress ever glared with a more 
deadly look at the hunter threatening her cubs, than he 
did at Ludovico. When the tAvo swords again struck 
each other, it was with an angry clang which showed 
that they were put to the utmost of their mettle, and 
which indicated that, this time, the fatal struggle would 
be violent and short. Whirling his sword closely round 
the blade of Gabriel along which it glided onward, Lu- 
dovico threw himself on his antagonist Avith the whole 
weight of his body. - Fortunately this impetuous thrust, 
which Gabriel could not parry, only grazed his breast, 
and, ripping up his vest, carried out of its side pocket 
the check of Alvarez for Willie. Whilst Gabriel had 
staggered back under the force of the blow, Ludovico 
had resumed safely a defensive position, and said calm- 
ly to Gabriel : “You have dropped, I believe some 
love message.” Alvarez stooped to pick up the paper, 
and, as he rose, Avhispered to Gabriel: “How, my son. 


460 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


is jour turn for a full blooded heroic impulse and a 
thrust worthy of it.” When putting himself again on his 
guard, Gabriel did not cross his sword as before with 
that of his antagonist, but, stepping back, kept it at the 
distance of about five inches from the point of the 
other weapon. “ Ha, ha !” said Ludovico with a sneer, 
‘‘you are becoming prudent.” “Perhaps,” replied 
Gabriel, and he retreated as Ludovico advanced, still 
keeping his sword disengaged, but, when he came within 
two feet of the wall to which he was pushed, he sprang 
forward with a long leap, and his sword, hugging the 
adverse one, which it mastered as it sped along the 
shining blade with the velocity of electricity, buried 
itself into Barbarini’s breast to the very hilt. Alvarez 
caught Gabriel in his arms, and hurried him away, re- 
peating several times to himself : ‘‘ I knew that impulse 
would carry the day.” 

Hight had come, and Gabriel was pacing his room 
with uneasy steps. The fact is, that it was hardly 
possible for him not to feel a little nervous after what 
had happened a few hours before. He was no professed 
duellist, and the idea of suddenly sending out of this 
world a fellow-being, however wicked he may be, is not 
a comfortable one to everybody. It is true, Gabriel 
felt that he had been the mere instrument of deserved 
punishment, but still there was something, way down 
at the bottom of his heart, which made him wish that 
it had been otherwise. According to usage among 
gentlemen following the traditions of the old regime on 
such occasions, he had sent his compliments to Colonel 
Barbarini with courteous inquiries about the condition 
in which he was. It must be confessed that Gabriel 
was in a state of mind which made solitude particularly 
irksome, and it was not without a feeling of relief that 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


461 


he heard footsteps ascending the staircase which led to 
his room. The door opened and his messenger entered. 
It was the same gentleman who had acted as his second 
in the morning. 

Gabriel,” he said, Colonel Barbarini is not expect- 
ed to see the light of to-morrow’s sun. He expressed 
his appreciation of your high-bred courtesy, and re- 
quested me to carry to you his very anxious desire to 
see you immediately.” 

To see me !” exclaimed Gabriel, greatly astonished. 

‘‘Yes. He repeated twice that he would consider 
it a favor, which he was sure you would not refuse 
him.” 

“ Certainly not,” replied Gabriel, “ although I can- 
not but think that it is a strange request. The inter- 
view will be painful to both, assuredly to me at least. 
But, of course, go I must.” 

Half an hour afterward he was entering the chamber 
of Colonel Barbarini. He was evidently expected ; 
for as soon as he made his appearance, two Federal 
officers who were sitting by the bed of the wounded 
man rose and retired, as if it had been preconcerted. 
Fidelio, the Italian servant of the colonel, remained 
motionless at some distance. The room was dimly 
lighted, and the gloom which pervaded it, combined 
with the knowledge that death was at hand, increased 
the weight which was on Gabriel’s soul. 

“I beg you, sir,’’ said Barbarini to him with a feeble 
voice, “ to accept my acknowledgments for this kind 
compliance on your part with my wishes. Pray, be 
seated, as near as possible, for I am faint, and I am told, 
and indeed I feel, that I am not to be long of this 
world. That thrust of yours, faith, came from a master 
hand. I could not have done better myself.” 


462 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


I hope,” said Gabriel, whose embarrassment wag 
increasing, I hope that it is not as bad as yon think.” 

‘‘ Bah ! Captain Gabriel, it would be womanisli to 
indulge in idle hopes. I am not the man to deceive my- 
self, nor to be deceived. By the by, let me tell you 

that, at my earnest request, 'General C has pledged 

me his word of honor that he would ignore this affair. 
I told him that I was the aggressor, and the only one 
to be blamed.” 

This was quite generous,” replied Gabriel, 
hlo,” continued Barbarini, “ it is only what it was 
proper that I should do.” Then he added with a faint 
smile : “ I see that you are almost ready to admit that 
the gentleman in me is not yet completely extinct, eh ?” 

He paused, and remained silent, as if exhausted. 
After a little while, he said : Fidelio, give me the 
cordial which the physician has prepared for this occa- 
sion.” 

The faithful servant, with tears trickling down his 
cheeks, took a vial which w^as on a table, and poured 
into a glass some of its contents, which was greedily 
swallowed by Colonel Barbarini, who had raised him- 
self on his elbow with much effort, and who, after tak- 
ing the draught, let his head fall heavily on his pillow. 
After a few minutes he looked much invigorated. 

“ Captain Gabriel,” he said, I must shorten this 
interview which must be far from being pleasant to 
you. I must not draw too largely on your politeness. 
I have neither the time, nor the inclination, to be prosy, 
nor have I invited you here to witness any pathetic 
scene, ending with some stage-effect confessions. I 
hate all scenes ; I hate sentimentalism and cant. I die 
without fear, as I have lived, believing neither in the 
immortality of the soul, nor in religion. I have, since 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


463 


mj ii] fancy, seen in Italy too inncli of what is called 
religion, not to know that it is an unmeasurable, ui;- 
fathomable humbug. That word humbug^ by the by, 
has been very properly introduced into your American 
vocabulary. It is so very expressive ! After this short 
metaphysical preface, allow me to mention the true rea- 
son why I wished you to be present at the fall of the 
curtain. You know my rank. Well, I wanted you to 
see that I am true to it to the end. You said you re- 
gretted that the gentleman and the prince were not 
united in me. My intention is to compel you to re- 
verse your verdict, as the phrase runs in your country. 
Hobiliuy obligates^ is the motto of our order in Europe, 
and a Yisconti is not the man to forget it even in 
America. How is Jane Dabney 
Dying,” said Gabriel. 

Is there no doubt of it 
Hone.” 

I never thought,” continued Barbarini, seem- 
ingly speaking to himself rather than to his visitor, 
that the girl would take it so much to heart. Those 
women of Louisiana cannot be like the rest of their sex. 
The fact is, captain,” addressing Gabriel, ‘Ghat, on 
sober reflection, I concluded that it was a very imbefit- 
ing, unequal match, which would complete my ruin, 
and I availed myself of a favorable opportunity to set 
myself free. Surely a thousand girls for one would 
have forgotten the past, and w®uld not have lived less 
happy for it afterward.” 

“ Perhaps in your country, colonel, not here,” ssid 
Gabriel, dryly. 

“ Whew ! everywhere, allow me to say, without of- 
fence to your chivalry. Women do not break their 
hearts for such trifles.” 


464 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


“ Colonel, tile tone which jou assume is not to my 
faste, neither does it become you, nor the present cir- 
cumstance.” 

‘‘I beg your pardon,” said Barbarini meekly, and 
he fell into a profound silence, which continued so long, 
that Gabriel felt uncertain how to act. The wounded 
man was motionless, his eyes were closed, and it was 
only his hard breathing which showed that he was alive. 
At last he seemed to revive, and he languidly uttered 
these words : 

^‘Captain Gabriel, excuse me for detaining you so 
long. I have been reflecting, and I have made up my 
mind. I say it again ; I will not violate the old mot- 
to : nchility obligates. And so, you afiirm that Jane 
has so loved me that she dies of grief for my deser- 
tion ?” 

‘‘ She is your victim, sir, in the full sense of the 
word.” 

Well,” said Barbanni in a ihore animated tone, 
‘‘ if she has been so true to me, she shall no longer be 
my victim, that is to say, as much as it is in my power 
to repair the wrongs I have done. Fidelio, hand me 
the small casket you know of.” 

Fidelio laid on the bed a beautifully-chiselled steel 
box, which Barbarini presented to Gabriel : 

‘‘ Take this,” he said, and carry it to Jane Dabney. 
There will be found in it the duly authenticated mar- 
riage contract which had disappeared. Fidelio, a little 
more of that cordial. My strength is failing me too 
soon. Thank you, Fidelio. This beverage is wonder- 
fully invigorating, and I feel better.” 

Then turning to Gabriel, he said : Do me the favor 
to convey to the princess my most respectful regards. 
Tell her that I deeply regret the sad doom to which I 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


465 


have condemned her. As to yourself, dear sir, I shall 
take the liberty to beg you to be my testamentary ex- 
ecutor. Fidelio will hand over to you six thousand 
dollars in gold, which I have here. Let that sum min- 
ister to the wants of the princess as long as she lives, 
and, wdien she is no more, let the remainder be used for 
the erection of a tomb, in which I wish her to be laid 
by my side, and on the marble slab of which you will 
inscribe these words : ‘ Here lie Prince and Prince‘=i3 
Massarino, of the most noble and illustrious house of 
Yisconti.’ Hotliing more, mind you ; no date of 
birth, and date of death ; and now, kind sir, I dismiss 
you with my warmest thanks. Farewell, may you en- 
joy many years of happiness !” Here his voice faltered, 
and he had a fainting fit, but he rallied as it were by 
the mere force of his will. He half-turned himself to- 
ward Gabriel, and, with a graceful wave of the hand, 
he said, in French : “ Adieu pour toujours. Yous di- 
rez au moinSy mon cher^ que je suis 'inort en prmce?’* 
He fell back lifeless with these words of pride on his 
lips. 

* Farewell for ever. You will at least say, my friend, that I died like a 
prince. 


CHAPTER XL. 


COK^CIiUSION OF THE STORY OF THE DARNEY FAMILY. 

When Colonel Barbarini died, the clock which was in 
the room struck nine. By a strange coincidence, it was 
on the anniversary of the day on which he had married 
Jane Dabney, and at that very hour when he had pledged 
faith to her at the altar before God and man. Leaving 
the body to the care of the attendants who were at 
hand, Gabriel hastened to call on Sarah Butler. He 
was anxious to show her the document which establish- 
ed beyond a doubt the social condition of Jane, and 
which excluded the possibility of a stain on her repu- 
tation. For several days preceding the death of Colo- 
nel Barbarini, this benevolent lady had not failed to visit 
assiduously those poor women, mother and daughter, 
who evidently were approaching the end of their suffer- 
ings. She could not banish them from her mind during 
that night, so great was the excitement produced by the 
tale which Gabriel had told her. In the morning, as 
soon as she could leave her home, she hurried to the 
abode oD'Mrs. Dabney, whom she found diligently ply- 
ing her needle as usual in the room where Gabriel had 
first seen her. Little Mary was sitting on a stool at her 
feet, and trying to spell a book which was the gift of 
Sarah. When the welcome visitor made her appear- 
ance, Mary ran to her with eagerness. She was reward- 
( 466 ) 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


467 


ed for this warm display of affection by repeated kisses, 
by a gentle patting on her curly locks and the present 
of a beautiful doll. 

“ O, I love you so much, good lady,” said the child. 

Take a seat by mamma. She is so sad ! and you always 
make her cheerful. Sit down ; in return for your kind- 
ness to Imr and to me, I’ll sing you a song which mam- 
ma has long been teaching me. I know it well, now. 
You will see.” 

“ Miss Sarah,” said Mrs. Dabney, you indulge your 
pet too much. You wdll spoil her.” 

Oh, no,” answered the lady. I am willing to be 
responsible for that. I don’t think it easy to spoil Mary. 
Come, child, come to me, and let me hear your song.” 

Thus encouraged, the little favorite, kneeling down 
cheerfully, with her elbows on the lap -of her patroness, 
and her tiny hands brought together as if in prayer, 
sang in a low silvery voice this ballad of the nursery : 

The Holy Virgin laid 
Upon His bed her sweetest babe, 

The Babe divine ; 

And forth she went to gather flowers, 

"Where roses bloomed beneath the bowers ; 

And as she culled the lily pale. 

And violets that decked the vale. 

She sweetly sang, “ I’ll weave a crown 
His baby brow to place upon !” 

The Babe divine ! 

• The Saviour of the world, and mine ! 

In love she quickly toiled. 

And quickly to her babe returned. 

The Babe divine — 

And found two angels clothed in light. 

One at the left, one at the right. 

With wings so bright, and eyes so blue, \ 

Just like the heavens whence they flew; 


468 


FERNANDO DE LEA/OS. 


They had been singing while He slept, 
And o’er the babe a watch they kept — 
The Babe divine ! 

The Saviour of the world, and mine ! 

They knew that when she came 
Their loving care was done for Him, 

The Babe divine ; 

And as their shining wings they spread. 
And joyful up to Heaven they sped, 

The rustling sound, though soft and low. 
Woke up the babe, who saw them go; 

The Mother chid them, though He smiled. 
Because they woke her holy child — 

The Babe divine ! 

The Saviour of the world, and mine ! 

She took Him from His bed. 

And kissed, and kissed again His brow. 
The Babe divine ! 

He kissed her too, and laughed so sweet I 
Wliile “ sleep again!” she would repeat I 
And then the Holy Virgin said, 

“I’ll rock Thee on this lily bed! 

Thou prettiest of babes that be I” 

But He would sleep no more, not He! — 
The Babe divine ! 

The Saviour of the world, and mine ! 

O Virgin Mary sweet ! 

AVatch o’er the little babes that sleep 1 
Thy Babe divine. 

Gives us the name in which we pray 1 
O ! keep them holy every day ! 

She loves the babies of the earth — 

She loves to see their joy and mirth — 
And when they need a faithful friend, 

A kind protector she will send. 

Because the Holy Mother, kind, 

With tender love still bears in mind 
The Babe divine ! 

The Saviour of the world, and mine ! 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


469 


The little songstress stopped, after having uttered 
these lines with a rare felicity of tone and musical 
taste in one so yonng. Being duly complimented and 
caressed, she retired to a corner of the room, to play 
with her doll. Whilst the child was thus engaged, 
Sarah related to Mrs. Dabney all that had happened 
the day before, and delivered to her the marriage con- 
tract sent by Colonel Barbarini. “ N ext to God,” said 
the poor mother with gratitude beaming in her face, 
‘‘ we are indebted for this to our generous young friend 
Gabriel. Let us go into the next room, and gradually 
break open tlie exciting news to Jane.” The two 
women rose, and were soon by the bed of the patient, 
who had been enjoying a placid slumber. Probably 
she was disturbed by the slight noise which they made, 
cautiously as they moved, for she welcomed them with 
a slight waving of her feeble hand and with a smile. 
She even spoke, but so low, that they had to bend their 
heads over her to catch the indistinct words. 

‘‘ Mother,” she said, “ I have had such a delightful 
sleep, the sweetest for a long time, and I feel so happy 1” 
Mrs. Dabney, expressing her satisfaction at what she 
heard, and feeling her way prudently as she proceeded, 
made her daughter acquainted with the tardy repara- 
tion which had been made for her wrongs. Jane re- 
mained unmoved, and showed no surprise ; “ I knew it 
all, mother,” she said calmly. “ I saw him last night ; 
he looked so pale, but, O, how beautiful ! He said he 
repented of what he had done, and that he had come to 
take me to his bosom, never more to be separated. I 
threw mv arms round him, and I heard a voice so ten- 
der and motherly that it melted my heart. Thus spoke 
the voice : ^ For thy sake and for thy prayers, and for thy 
long sufferings, and for his repentance, he is forgiven,’ 


470 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


and we rose up to Heaven, Imsband and wife — ^husband 
and wife.” An expression of ecstasy settled over her 
features. The soul bad departed with the glowing 
hope of eternal happiness. 

Two Aveeks had elapsed, and the little Willie, the 
boot-black, had not appeared at his stand under the por- 
tico of the St. Charles Hotel. He had been kept at 
home with his mother and sister Mary. Occasionally, 
either one or the other of these two children, dressed in a 
full suit of mourning, would be seen running out of the 
old wooden gate, evidently sent on some pressing errand, 
and eagerly bent on executing it. Gabriel and Sarah 
Butler were the only habitual visitors at Mrs. Dabney’s, 
and, whenever they came out, it was always with a sor- 
roAvful face. As to Mrs. Dabney, she was invisible to 
all save to her two friends. It was reported that her 
health had entirely given way and that her decline was 
rapid. One morning, a carriage stood in the street be- 
fore the old gate Avith which we are familiar. It had 
brought Gabriel to the humble dwelling of the poor wid- 
ow. After a little while, Mrs. Dabney came out, lean- 
ing heavily on his arm, and, with his assistance, got into 
the vehicle. Coachman,” said Gabriel, drive to the 
archbishop’s mansion. Con de street, betAveeii Ursulines 

and Hospital.” “Aye, aye, I know the place well 

enough,” replied he, as he whipped his horses and rat- 
tled away. Gabriel gazed at the carriage as it whirled 
rapidly onward, shook his head mournfully, and, re-en- 
tering the lot, walked pensively toAA^ard the small tene- 
ment in the background, probably to stay Avith the 
children until Mrs. Dabney’s return. 

Let us follow Mrs. Dabney to the oldest edifice in 
Louisiana. In the history of our State are mentioned 
in these Avords the erection of that building and the 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


471 


contiii nation of its existence until tlie present day : 
‘‘ This edifice was constructed for the use of the TJrsiiline 
Nuns on Conde street, between Ursuline and Hospital 
streets. They took possession of it in 1730, when it 
was completed, and they continued to occupy it until 
1824, when they moved to a more splendid and more 
spacious convent, which they had caused to be built three • 
miles below the city on the bank of the river. After 
the State House had been burnt in New Orleans, the 
legislature sat in the old convent, and, in 1831, its 
sacred walls, one century after they had pealed for the 
first time with holy anthems, and had heard soft pray- 
ers whispered to the Yirgin Mary, were converted to 
purposes of legislation, and resounded with oratorical 
displays and fierce, political party debates. It has since 
resumed a character more consonant with its original 
destination, and has become the bishop’s palace.” 

At the time when the incidents of the story which I 
relate were taking place, there lived within the walls 
of the old convent, as the titular secretary of the arch- 
bishop, and as the friend and librarian of that prelate, 
an ecclesiastic who, from his great age, had felt himself 
compelled to retire from the discharge of those duties 
which he had been performing in Louisiana for, more 
than half a century. He had baptized and married a 
large portion of the Catholic population of New Or- 
leans, and was venerated as a saint. Now he seldom 
went out, but they frequently sought him for advice in 
the difficulties of their ordinary life and for consolation 
in their days of sorrow. He had known Mrs. Dabney 
when an infant; he had poured upon her head the bap- 
tismal water of Christianity ; he had instructed her in 
the faith and qualified her for communion, when for 
the first time she had to approach the Holy Table ; he 


472 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


had administered to her the sacrament of marriage, and 
he had remained her confessor since her early youth. 
The old man, on the day which I mention, wore a loose 
wrapper of coarse gray cloth girded round his waist 
with a rude cord, from which, in front, hung a crucifix 
of ebony. His head was covered with a worn-out vel- 
vet cap, from under which emerged a few straggling 
ringlets of snow-white hair. His long beard, as white 
as his hair, spread in ample folds on his boi'Om. His 
broad forehead, which receded back as it rose up from 
his eyebrows, the spiritual expression and beauty of his 
eyes in which dwelt the melancholy of habitual con- 
templation, his straight aquiline nose, his lips which 
spoke decision of character, and the ascetic paleness of 
his cheeks, formed a countenance which it was imposs- 
ible to see, without its leaving a deep impression on 
the memory. He was reading attentively, when Mrs. 
Dabney entered. On his noticing how feebly she 
moved toward him, his natural paleness increased vis- 
ibly, and he hastened with tottering steps to meet her, 
saying : 

How now, daughter, what imprudence is this ? 
You should not have come out in your condition of 
health.” 

“It matters little, father,” replied Mrs. Dabney, 
“ you know, as well as I do, that God is recalling me 
to Him, and my dear Jane awaits me in a better world. 
But time presses, and I wish to have a short interview 
with you in relation to my children, who will soon be 
without a mother.” 

The old priest took both her hands in his own, made 
her sit by him, and looked at her like one who was 
ready to hear her communication. 

“ Father,” she said, “ you already know that, thanks 


FEJ^NANDO DE LEMOS. 


473 


to the noble youth Gabri'el, my little Willie has found 
a protector wlio provides for his support and educa- 
tion.” 

“ I have more than once, daughter, thanked Heaven 
for it, and blessed that generous Spaniard, although he 
hates the holy priesthood so insanely, for I am not un- 
informed as to his ways arid peculiarities. His heart at 
least is most sound, if he has got some disorder in the 
brain. But charity covers many sins. He who, within 
a few hours, gave ten thousand dollars to the widow’s 
child, and ten other thousand dollars to a hospital, and 
whose hand is habitually open for the relief of misfor- 
tune, is surely entitled to indulgences from the ChurcH 
The aberrations of intellect in such a Christian, for a 
Christian he must be, or deserves to be, are truly de- 
plorable. But the ways of God are mysterious, and no 
doubt He will in due time enlighten the mind of that 
excellent Samaritan. Besides, he is a Spaniard, and 
there is always hope for the salvation of every one of 
that noble race, obstinate and haughty though it 
be, but yet so thoroughly impregnated with religious 
convictions. A Spaniard is by birth a soldier of the 
Church. It cannot be forgotten above, that those champ- 
ions of the Catholic faith fought eight hundred years 
for the cross, without asking for rest, or mercy.” 

‘‘Amen,” said widow Dabney devoutly. “And 
now, father, with a heart full of gratitude, I come to 
inform you also that a wealthy lady proposes to adopt 
my Mary.” 

The worthy priest raised his eyes to Heaven, and 
seemed to offer silently a short thanksgiving. After a 
pause, he said : 

“ Daughter, I do not wonder at it, for what does the 
Psalmist tell us : I have been young ^ and now am old ; 


474 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


yet have 1 not seen the righteous forsahen^ nor his seed 
legging hread.'^'^ 

“ Blit,” said Mrs. Dabney with much hesitation, ‘‘ the 
lady is not of our persuasion.” 

Ha ! indeed,” exclaimed Father Anselmo, for such 
was his name, and a slight shade of displeasure passed 
over his face. After musing awhile, he asked Mrs. 
Dabney of what persuasion that lady was. 

A Presbyterian.” 

“ Her name 
Sarah Butler.” 

The priest heaved a deep sigh, as if greatly relieved. 

I know her by her deeds,” he said ; a most worthy 
and Christian woman, although she does not see the 
whole truth yet. But God abides His time. And I 
suppose, daughter, that you wish to consult me on the 
propriety of intrusting your child to the maternal care 
of Sarah Butler?” 

“Yes, father; your approbation has been made a 
condition to my surrendering my daughter to her, and,” 
she added in a somewhat deprecating tone, “ I must in- 
form you that this most liberal friend of mine has 
promised to raise Mary in the creed which I wish her 
to have.” 

“I will trust the generous lady,” exclaimed the 
priest joyfully ; “ for God dwells in that charitable . 
heart of hers, and I will leave the rest to Him. Be- 
sides, my daughter, I have been struck with a sentiment 
expressed by one of the most eloquent of our pulpit 
orators,” and he laid his hand on a book lying open near 
him on a small round table, “there are,” says the 
Dominican Jj2iQ,ovdi2i\Ye^ ^^Protestants _ among Catholics^ 
and Catholies among Protestants, without their leing 
oonscious of what they areP 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


475 


. Then, with your consent, all is settled in relation to 
Mary,” continued Mrs. Dabney, and I have done with 
earth. May I not be permitted to say : “ JVow, 0 Lord^ 
dismiss thy servant f But, before parting with yon, 
probably for ever, pray, father, grant me your benedic- 
tion.” 

As she thus spoke, she knelt at the feet of the minis- 
ter of God, who rose slowly, looked up to Heaven, 
stretched forth bis hands over her head and uttered his 
blessing with all the fervor of his pious and affectionate 
heart. When he had done, he bent his looks down. 
Mrs. Dabney did not move ; she seemed to have sunk 
lower to the floor. He attempted to raise her, and saw 
that she had closed her earthly career. The so long 
broken heart had ceased to beat. 

Easter came, that great festival of Christianity. In 
the morning of that day, all the boot-black boys of the 
St. Charles Hotel were at their post under its lofty por- 
tico. They expected a shower of dimes, for they knew 
it to be an occasion on which their customers would 
like to wear clean shoes as well as clean linen. As it 
was yet very early, there were but few persons stirring 
in the streets. The news-boys and the boot-black boys 
had congregated near one of the pillars of the portico, 
teasing each other, and cracking jokes to kill time, 
whilst waiting for the opportunity to exercise their 
trade, by entrapping somebody into purchasing the 
‘‘ Times,” or the “ Picayune,” or stretching his* foot on 
one of the numerous stools which invited his choice. 
Suddenly one of them said : 

‘‘By the by, what has become of Willie Dabney? 
We have not seen his sad face for a long time.” 

“ What will you give me to tell you ?” answered a 
nasal voice. It was that of the hopeful youth who, in 


476 


FEJiiVANDO DE LEMOS. 


the heginning of this story, had, as he said, put Gabriel 
on the right track and had got no reward for it. 

“ You are so stingy, Sam Slick !’’ said one of the 
boys, and the rest assented in a chorus to this sentiment. 
“ You never do, or even say anything without a con- 
sideration.” 

Because,” answered Sam, I want to make my way 
in the world. But, for once anyhow, since you are so 
beggarly that I cannot make anything out of you. I’ll 
satisfy your curiosity for nothing. You are so dull, you 
never can ^ee or hear anything that is valuable, and I 
must come all the way from Connecticut with matches 
in my pocket to light up your Southern two-penny 
candles. Listen, all of you, my hearties, and, if there 
is any particle of latent sense in your skulls, follow my 
example, keep your eyes open, and see whether it is a 
mouse or a weazel that stirs around you. If you had 
been as sharp as I am, you would have known, without 
my telling you, that Willie has been picked up by a 
rich man, and Mary his sister, by a rich lady, who are 
going to educate them, and settle them in life with a 
silver spoon in their mouth. Here is lack for you, you 
gaping boobies.” 

Various exclamations of surprise arose among the 
juvenile listeners. Wonderful,” said one, ‘‘ how some 
folks are born for luck !” 

Well,” said Sam, ‘Gf I am not born for luck. I’ll 
make luck wait on me.” 

“ Of course you will,” squeaked a voice, “ you are 
such a smart Yankee !” 

‘‘ Certainly I am smart, and the smartest boy too 
in all creation. My mother told me so the very first 
day she brought me out and laid me in the cradle,” re- 
plied the recent importation from Hew England. ‘‘ I 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


477 


have now fifty dollars on hand, and I came here with- 
out a cent two months ago ! When I have a capital of 
one hundred dollars, I’ll set up a shop ; and, when I 
have a thousand dollars, I’ll speculate in cotton and 
sugar. I’U become a rich merchant, or a fat-bellied 
banker.” 

“ And you will be elected mayor of the city,” shout- 
ed one of the youthful knights of the shoe-brush. 

And why not ?” said Sam. 

“ He will be governor, before we can say Jack Rob- 
inson,” shrieked another. 

“ And why not ?” repeated in a louder tone of as- 
surance the undaunted object of these quizzes. 

“ That is not enough for his merits,” bawled another. 

I propose Sam for the Senate of the United States.” 

That might come to pass,” retorted Sam, “ if you 
were not too much of a goose ever to be a member of 
the legislature and have a vote in the matter. But I’ll 
tell you all a secret gra — a — atis,” dwelling on that 
word, and extending it so as to make it a yard long. 
“ Come here, all of you, my jewels. I want to ask 
you two questions, and answer them myself, because I 
don’t believe you can, unlighted lamp-posts that you 
are. Was not Abe Lincoln a rail splitter ? Y — e — s, 
and a great man he was, a capital joker, for whom a 
whole nation, the greatest nation in the Avorld, is in 
mourning. Was not Andy Johnson a tailor ? Y — e — s, 
and you are all throwing up your caps at whatever he 
does, and thanking him on your knees for keeping the 
lash from your backs. How for my secret. Open your 
long ears. Here you see a future president of the 
United States in Sam Slick the boot-black. I tell it 
you confidentially. Keep it to yourselves, mind you, 
and make your profit of it.” 


478 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


“We will not keep it to ourselves. We will tell it 
to the whole universal Yankee nation,” shouted the 
hoys tumultuously. “ Hear, hear ! Hip, hip ! Hur- 
rah, hurrah ! Three cheers for Sam Slick the boot- 
black, and the future president of the United States !” 


CHAPTEE XLI. 


WHAT HAPPEISHD TO FERNAJJfDO DE LEMOS IN NEW ORLEANS 
AFTER THE END OF THE SECESSION WAR. 

It is inexpressibly distressing for one wbo was born 
in opulence, and who bad always existed comfortably 
on an inherited income, to be suddenly reduced to the 
sad necessity of making a living, when sixty years old. 
Besides its being the hardest and the most difficult of 
things for a high-born and high-bred gentleman to 
transform himself into a scraper of dimes, it is, at that 
time of life, too late for any body to become a stage 
actor, a preacher, a physician, a lawyer, a broker, a 
merchant, a clerk, a druggist, a charlatan, a manufac- 
turer of yellow-backed novels, or anything whatever, 
not even a politician or a thief. It is too late / A 
terrible sentence uttered by fate, and from which there 
is no appeal. What on earth then shall I do to keep 
soul and body together, was the question which I put 
to myself, notwithstanding I really longed for their 
separation ? I had nothing left to me beyond the violin 
of Tintin Calandro and the portrait of the princess of 
Lamballe, bequeathed by him to me. I was almost 
irresistibly tempted to put an end to an insupportable 
existence. But I am somewhat of a Christian, and I 
doubted whether I had the right to dispose of- my life. 
Besides, I-liad survived the loss of one whom I valued 
much more than life and fortune ; and could I not now 

( 479 ) 


480 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


survive a miicli inferior loss ? Should not I continue to 
dey^osit a bouquet on her tomb, as long as I had twenty- 
five cents to buy one, and then starve, stretched on the 
cold marble under which she slept, if I could not hon- 
estly earn the morsel of bread which I thought it my duty 
to strive to get ? That will Ido, said I to myself, and I 
felt greatly relieved after taking that resolution. I looked 
round for employment of some sort, even of the hum- 
blest. “ What !” exclaimed every friend and acquaintance 
to Avhom I ayiplied. “ What joke is this ! You poor, 
Fernando ! You are too clever for that. If you were 
really poor, that calm grand air of yours which you al- 
ways wear, would have quickly vanished. What ! you 
say that you must work for bread, and you look as lordly 
as a Koman senator ! Pish ! that stiff upy^er lip of a 
feudal baron won’t pass current in Caron del et street 
among the lords of the cotton bag, I assure you, if you 
attempt to be a broker.” They thus seemed to agree 
in expressing the same sentiments in different language. 
Another said to me with a rude and well-meant kind- 
ness : “ If you really have lost eveiy thing, the sooner 
you blow out your brains the better. What the deuce 
will you do in this world with your antiquated no- 
tions ? You belong to another age. Can you lie and 
cheat ? Ko. Then you cannot make a living. You 
think perhaps that, perchance,- somebody may need an 
honest man, and will employ you because you are wor- 
thy of trust and will not rob him. That is one advan- 
tage you would present to him, to be sure, but, on the 
other hand, you could not help seeing him steal; you 
would hear him lie, and he wbuld know that you de- 
spise him at the bottom of your heart. This he would 
not stand ; he would not expose himself to blush when 
meeting tliat stern eye of yours, not he. I would not 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


481 


for one, bj tlie gods, much as I like you, old fellow. 
He would, I am sure, prefer one belonging to bis own 
peculiar school of morality — one who would help him 
on a pinch, without too many scruples about what is 
right or wrong, do you understand me — even should he 
thereby run the risk of being plundered by his em- 
ployee. You know that birds of the same feather like 
to flock together. Do you think that the eagle, if he 
chanced to have a broken wing like yours, would be 
employed by the buzzard as his carrion carver ? Ho ! 
Eemember that our whole social body has become by 
the efiect of our last war a topsy-turvy concern, where 
demoralization thrones at the top, and morality is choked 
at the bottom. How find a place for you, if you can, 
in this jamming of rotten materials. Good-bye, ex- 
cuse me. I have an engagement with a patriotic aider- 
man who awaits my coming and from whom I expect a 
decently fat job.” 

Well, said I to myself, if this is true, the prospect 
before me is any thing but flattering. Surely it is too 
late, with gray hair, to become an apprenticed rogue, 
and study the alphabet of rascality. It would be worse 
than a crime, it would be a Mtise, as the French say. 
In my perplexity a thought struck me, and I imme- 
diately acted on it. I had in the Confederacy saved the 
life of a Yankee soldier, and had learned that, after the 
war, having settled in Hew Orleans, he was at the head 
of a prosperous printing establishment of his own. I 
went to him ; he received me with great warmth of 
manner. 

My dear sir,” he said, I am happy to see you. 
Hever shall I forget what you have done for me. You 
come, no doubt, to order some printing. I will, of course, 
have it done for you cheaper than for any body else.” 

21 


482 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


I replied, ‘‘ I came not for that, but to pro- 
cure employment for a poor friend of mine. Do you 
need a proof-reader?” 

Just in time, mine left me this morning, and in his 
stead I at once accept your friend.” 

“ I thank you. What will be his salary ?” 

‘‘ Fifty dollars a month.” 

« Yery well, that is sufficient. When shall 1 begin ?” 

‘‘ What, what !” exclaimed the Yankee, staring at 
me with an almost ludicrous expression of astonish- 
ment. “ You cannot be serious.” 

“ I mean what I say. When shall I be installed in 
office ?” 

Do n’t talk so,” said the printer. “ You, a proof- 
reader ! You, reduced to such a strait ! Damn me, if I 
permit it. Excuse my swearing, but damn me, I say, 
if I do n’t do something better for you. 1 can spare a 
few thousand dollars. Do me the favor to accept tliem, 
until a situation worthy of your social position and of 
your talents can be found.” 

“ I am deeply grateful to you,” said I, pressing his 
hand. “ But not one word more on the subject, if you 
do not want to give me great pain. My resolution is 
inflexible. Therefore consider, I pray, this matter 
settled. I am your proof-reader from to-day.” 

I confess that there was in the emotion and gratitude 
exhibited by my Northern friend a balsam needed by 
my bruised heart. 'Not long after I had begun to make 
a living by my own efforts, (it is never too late to do 
so) I happened to be passing by the cathedral, when, to 
my astonishment, I saw Zabet, who, notwithstanding 
her being one hundi'ed years old, had returned to her 
former place of trade with her basket of cakes. 

‘‘ Is that you, dear old Zabet ?’.’ I said. Have you 
resumed the occupation you had given up?” 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


483 


Alas,” slie replied, I have, like all the decent and 
resp3ctable people here, lost my little means of support, 
which I had acquired by hard work and economy and 
the liberality of Tin tin Calandro. But I can bear it ; 
I have, after all, but a few days to live. What I can 
not bear, is all that I see aromid me. O Christ ! O 
Christ ! Only think of it ! All our ladies, royal blood 
and all that sort of thing, turned to be cooks and wash- 
erwomen, and the real washerwomen and cooks, with 
turnip- juice in their veins, lodging in fine houses and 
sporting equipages ! Ah, me ! ah, me ! I can’t stand it. 
My philosophy is clean broken-hearted.” After a pause, 
during which she groaned piteously and shed a fiood of 
tears, she resumed her discourse : And you, my son, 
how have you fared ? Have you also suffered much % ” 

“ I am no exception,” said I, informing her that I 
was totally ruined, and that I had turned out to be a 
proof-sheet reader, at fifty dollars a month. She clap- 
ped her shrivelled hands and fairly shrieked : 

Mercy on me ! The grandson of Grovernor Lemos 
a printer’s employee ! Fifty dollars a month ! Mercy ! 
Mercy ! This blow finishes me. You can not live on 
fifty dollars a month, my child. I have saved three 
hundred dollars, which I had hoarded for a special 
purpose ; take them for God’s sake. I had destined 
them to buy a tomb near poor Tintin Calandro’s, but 
take the money, take it all. This world has become 
so bad, that old Zabet does not care now where she will 
be buried in it. I will fetch the silver to-morrow, not 
greenbacks, mind you. You need it more than I do. 
You are royal blood, and I am nothing but an old ne- 
gress.” 

I thought that she would go distracted in her despair, 
and it was with great difficulty that I could restore her 


484 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


to some composure. Zabet,”said I, “ the old negress, 
as you call yourself, has offered me all that she pos- 
sesses, when some of my friends and relatives, of royal 
blood as you call them, have not remembered saOred 
obligations and not bethought themselves of asking me 
if I needed anything. I will not allude to those who 
have even forgotten to pay me money which they owe, 
when they have the means to do so, if they choose. 
Therefore, Zabet,” continued I, smiling, “I proclaim 
you royal blood.” 

I, royal blood !” she exclaimed in an ecstasy of pride. 
“ I, proclaimed royal blood by one who has the right to 
do it. Then old Zabet has had honor enough in this 
world and regrets no more having lived so long. Now, 
my son, I will die game as royal blood ought to die, 
and my philosophy, far from drooping, shall wear cap 
and feathers to the last !” 

“Yes,” I said, “we will die game, grandma Zabet, 
and you shall sleep near Tintin Calandro. No longer 
disturb yourself about my fifty dollars a month. It is 
enough to procure for me shelter, clothing, bread and 
cheese. With that, we, of royal blood, ought to be sat- 
isfied, and we can afford not to care a pinch of snuff for 
an upstart world.” I left the old soul as happy as if 
she had been ushered into paradise by some archangel, 
and I went to my proof-sheets in a better mood than I 
had been able to do before. 

It was the anniversary of the death of Tintin Calan- 
dro. I determined to visit, as usual on that occasion, 
his tomb in the St. Louis cemetery, at his favorite hour 
of midnight. I knelt before it and prayed fervently. 
I felt a pressure on my right arm ; it was the grasp of a 
hand. I looked round in astonishment, and saw noth- 
ing. The hand retained its hold, and my mind heard 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


485 


within itself these words : I am Tintin Calandro, and 
I am at last permitted to communicate with you, my 
friend. Think not that this is a dream and a delusion. 

I will give you a substantial proof to the contrary. 
When you go home, look at the back of the portrait of 
the princess of Lamballe. Examine carefully the lining 
of the canvass; you will discover a spot thicker than- 
the rest. Rip it up, and you will find concealed there 
five thousand pounds sterling in the notes of the Bank 
of England. During the French revolution, in 1793, 
they had been intrusted to my safe-keeping by a friend. 
I ne^er met him again on earth. He is now in the world 
of spirits, and permits me to say to you that this sum 
is yours. I am happy at last, and we soon shall be hap- 
py together.” The grasp was released. I ran home, 
looked at the place indicated, and there found what I 
been told I should find. I relate the fact as it happened. 
What inferences shall I draw ? Are there spiritual man- 
ifestations, as believed by many, or mysterious revela- 
tions' within the soul, or merely wonderful coincidences 
between dreams and realities ? 

How, by the blessing of God, I was once more inde- 
pendent, and had ample means to satisfy my physical 
wants for the remainder of the few years which, accord- 
ing to the course of nature, I had to pass on earth. 
Alas, that I could not say as much as to the wants of 
my soul ! But it was much, to be able to attend *to them 
exclusively, and to live within a world of my own — a 
world of the imagination peopled by beings of my own 
recollection, or creation, according to my choice, without 
being constantly dragged out of the dreamy solitude 
wLich I love, by the stern necessity of groveling expe- 
ditions abroad, made daily in company with Mammon, 
to rake a shilling out of the mud of the sewers of hu- 


486 


FERNANDO DE LEMOS. 


manitj, and provide an acliing body with shelter, rai- 
ment and food. Thanks to the timely revelation I have 
mentioned, or to a mysterious and unaccountable inci- 
dent or circumstance, I have been able to secure com- 
fortable lodgings near the St. Louis cemetery, and my 
windows overlook that sacred spot. There I live in the 
utmost seclusion, waiting calmly for the end to come. To 
while away time I have penned the preceding pages, and 
I was saying to myself : What next ? when, opening one 
of the morning newspapers, I saw announced the death 
in France of Joseph Lakanal after an unusually long 
career. Thus I had become free from the obligation of 
secrecy which he had imposed upon me, and I resolved 
to amuse my idle hours with writing a narrative, drawn 
from the sources of information which he had opened to 
me during his residence in Louisiana, and which I may, 
on a future day, publish under the title of Aubert 
Dubayet, as a sequel to this story, should I, Fernando 
de Lemos, meet from the public a sufficiently favorable 
reception, to embolden me to present my humble fol- 
lower to that fastidious sovereign. 


THE END. 


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MOTHER GOOSE. — Set to mnsic, and with illustrations. - 
BRAZEN GATES. — A new child’s book, illustrated. 

THE ART OF AMUSING. — Book of home amusements. 
STOLEN WATERS. — A fascinating novel. Celia Gardner. 
HEART HUNGRY. — A novel. By Maria J. Westmoreland. 
THE SEVENTH VIAL. — A new work. Dr. John Gumming. 


THE GREAT TRIBULATION. — new ed. do. 

THE GREAT PREPARATION. — do. do. 

THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. — do. do. 

THE LAST WARNING CRY. — do. do. 


ANTIDOTE TO “ THE GATES AJAR.” — - - ' - 

HOUSES NOT MADE WITH HANDS. — Hoppin’s IlluS. 
BEAUTY IS POWER. — An admirable book for ladies. 
ITALIAN LIFE AND LEGENDS. — By Anna Cora Ritchie. - 
LIFE AND DEATH. — A new American novel. 

HOW TO MAKE MONEY; AND HOW TO KEEP IT. — Davies. 
THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH. — By Charles Reade. 
TALES FROM THE OPERAS. — The Plots of all the Operas. 
ADVENTURES OP A HONEYMOON. — A love-story. 


AMONG THE PINES. — Down 

South. 

By Edmund Kirke. 

MY SOUTHERN FRIENDS. — 

do. 

do. 

- 

DOWN IN TENNESSEE. — 

do. 

do. 

- 

ADRIFT -IN DIXIE. — 

do. 

do. 

- 

AMONG THE GUERILLAS. — 

do. 

do. 

- 

A BOOK ABOUT LAWYERS. - 

-Bright and interesting. 

- 

A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS.— 

p 

do. - 

- 


WOMAN, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE. — By Fred. Saunders. - 
PRISON LIFE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS. — By J. J. Craven. 
POEMS, BY L.-G. THOMAS. — . - . - 

PASTIMES WITH MY LITTLE FRIENDS. — Mrs. Bennett. - 
THE SQUIBOB PAPERS. — A comic book. John Phoenix. - 
COUSIN PAUL. — A new American novel. - - - 

JARGAL. — A novel from the French of Victor Hugo. 
CLAUDE GUEUX. — do. do. do. 

LIFE OP VICTOR HUGO. — do. do. 

CHRISTMAS HOLLY. — By Marion Harland, Illustrated. - 
THE RUSSIAN BALL. — An illustrated satirical Poem. 

THE SNOBLACE BALL. — do. do. 

THE PRINCE OP KASHNA. — Edited by R. B. KimbaU. 


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' G. W. CARLETON db CO. 

ineous Works, 
imily H. Moore . . . , 

Mrs. Emma L. Moffett, 
Kinahan Cornwallis. . 
: 1870. — By M. D. Landon. 
rederic Rowland Marvin. . 
Vmerican Lady. 

'^hite House. — Keckley. . 
mateur Sailors. — Warren. 

. Field. With illustrations. 
)r. E. B, Lighthill. . 
ew book, by Olive Logan, 
lansfield Tracy Walworth, 
by Mrs. J. C. R. Dorr. . 
— By Prof. Davidson, 
om the Spirit World. 

—A story by Eleanor Kirk, 
ments in the U.S. Army, 
erican novel, 
do. do. 

do. do. 

w novel by John F. Swift . 
ns by Irving Van Wart, jr. 
y Joseph H. Greene, jr. 
—By Eliza Cruger. 

NEW YORK. — By C. H. Webb, 
lerican novel. 
j»iAi;i!,MoiSELLB MERQUEM. — A novel by George Sand. . 
TEE IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH. — By H. R. Helper. 
NOJOQUE — A Question for a Continent. — do. 

PARIS IN 1867. — By Henry Morford 

THE bishop’s son. — A novel by Alice Cary. 

CRUISE or THE ALABAMA AND SUMTER. — ByCapt. Semmes. 
Hi!,t.EN COURTENAY. — A novel, author “ Vernon Grove.” 
SOUVENIRS OF TRAVEL. — By Madame OctaviaW..LeVert. 
VANQUISHED. — A novel by Agnes Leonard. 
wiLL-o’-THE-wisp. — A child’s book, from the German . 
FOUR OAKS. — A novel by Kamba Thorpe. 

THE CHRISTMAS FONT. — A child’s book, % M. J. Holmes. 

POEMS, BY SARAH T. BOLTON. 

MARY BRANDEGEE — A novel by Cuyler Pine. 

RENSHAWE. — do. do. 

MOUNT CALVARY. — By Matthew Hale Smith. 
PROMETHEUS IN ATLANTIS. — A propheCy. 

TITAN AGONiSTES. — Ap American novel. 


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